Prototype Maelstrom
by darkshot618
Summary: At the sealing of the Kyuubi the Shinigami made a decision that would change Naruto's life. See how his life unfolds as he demonstrates powers older than the ninja world itself. NarutoxHarem. Civilian Council bashing. Strong Naruto
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hey everybody, well because of a few reviews and my own opinion I'm going to do a bit of fine tuning on this chapter and chapter 2. First off, I'm going to put them back at their original ages. Second, I'm putting up a prologue in this chapter to give a hint about how Naruto gained the virus. Third, I'm going to remove the Sakura and Sasuke bashing, I clearly need a bit more practice before I start to bash them, I'll still bash the civilian council, give you wonderful guys and gals a bit of extra humor. And also thank you to Vail Ryuketsu for pointing out the whole Runner deal, I pride myself as a knowledgeable Prototype fan, so when I forgot about the whole difference between a Prototype and a Runner, I literally face palmed myself, you can still see the hand print on my forehead, and in response to him, yes he is a Prototype and he'll have the abilities that come with it. So I hope these little fix ups will help make the story a bit better, and make it better for you guys to read. So thank you for your honest opinions and reviews. Please read and review to help both myself and the story grow. Now time for the disclaimer. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Prototype, they are owned by their respective owners, I don't make any money off of this, please support the official release.**

**Prologue: **

It was Ocotober 10th, a night that would go down in infamy, the night of the Kyuubi attack on the ninja village Konohagakure. Though, there is a part to it that no one knew about. The Kyuubi launched one of the famed **Tailed Beast Balls**, which the Yondaime Hokage was able to teleported to an area in the forest devoid of life. In the area of the explosion a massive crater formed. From the crater a small amorphous black and red blob crawled out. The blob reached out with its senses, seeking out the most powerful being within a mile radius in order to try and take its power for its own, it found an enormous being nearly half a mile away from itself with an ungodly amount of power. From its body it launched several tendrils allowing it to launch itself nearly twenty yards at a time. It eventaully reached the mass of power and latched onto one of its legs, and started to swing onto its back, when suddenly several chains latched onto the blob and its target.

Minato Namikaze was standing on top of the giant toad boss summon, Gamabunta, holding his newborn son, Naruto Uzuamaki, while his wife, the former Kyuubi jinchuriki, Kushina Uzumaki, held down the massive Kyuubi no Yoko with her chakra chains. He was preparing to do the hardest thing in his life, sacrifice himself to make his son into the jinchuriki of the Kyuubi, he had sent one of his toad summons to the Sandaime to tell him that his son should be respected as a hero for containing the Kyuubi, but both he and his wife had a strong feeling that their son was not going to recieve any respect, in fact they were sure that he would be treated like most of the other villages jinchuriki, hated, feared, and ultimately treated akin to a plague ridden rat. But if they sealed the Kyuubi back into Kushina, when she would inevetibely die moments later, there would be a power imbalance in the Elemental Countries, Kumo or Iwa would take this as an opportunity to destroy Konoha, and possibly toss the shinobi world into the Fourth Great Shinobi War. They both hated to do this, but they had to seal the Kyuubi into their son to save the village, both now and in the future.

So with that the Yondaime launched into several handseals summoning the God of Death himself, the Shinigami. Minato yelled out to the Shinigami to seal away the beast's Yin chakra within himself, and the Yang chakra and the fox within his son. The Shinigami looked over towards the beast and was about to reach out for its soul, but halted when he saw its back, he saw an small... thing, on the Kyuubi's back. He smelled a scent of death that was powerful, even when compared to his own, on the blob and could tell that if he left, whatever the hell that thing was, alone it could very well toss the world itself into an unimaginable amount of chaos and destruction. He then looked down at the child in his summoners arms and saw into his destiny, and did not like what he saw. He saw the boy struggling against many powerful enemies, and in the process losing many of his precious people, and at the end he saw the child facing off against, not the masked man who had brought about the Kyuubi attack, but someone else, someone who had power that surpassed that of both the Rikudou Sennin and even the Juubi, who, if he won, would destroy everything in sight, and eventually become so powerful, that even they, the gods, would stand no chance against this man. He saw that the thing that was held down by the Uzumaki's chains held powers similar to that of this man, and if the boy held it, and mastered it, he would stand a fighting chance against this ominous figure, so he made a choice which would effect the course of the world itself.

He reached through his summoners soul and grabbed onto both the Kyuubi and the blob, both of which sensed the power of the death god and were struggling against him, but ultimately failed. With one last, mighty tug the death god pulled away the soul of the kyuubi and the blob. He took the knife from his mouth and severed half of the Kyuubi's chakra from it's soul and locked it away in his summoner's soul. The Kyuubi holding onto whatever instinct it had left, made to kill the child in order to stop it from being locked away again, but was foiled when both the child's mother and father jumped in front of its mighty claw and took the blow for him, effectively saving his life. The Shinigami allowed both the parents enough time to impart a few last words to their child, and let the Yondaime draw the seals key onto one of his toad summons, before dispelling him. With their final words done the Yondaime used a seal transfer to lock away the Kyuubi's Yang chakra, and unknowingly the blobs power, within his son. The Shinigami then swallowed the soul of his summoner and the Kyuubi's chakra as his payment, and took the red-haired Uzumaki's soul to Kami to be judged to her place in the afterlife, leaving the child crying near the deceased bodied of his mother and father.

**Within the seal: **

The Kyuubi thrashed against the bars on its cage, angered once more about being captured and sealed inside an Uzumaki. The strongest biju eventually tired of trying to escape, laid down within its prison. For a while it merely brooded over its confinement, until its senses alerted it to another power within its seal. Curious it looked out and saw, in a much smaller cage, a strange being with the possiblilty for immense power. The Kyuubi gained a slight feeling of foreshadowing by looking at the creature within the cage and pondered on it for a few moments before thinking to itself,_** 'Somehow I can tell, things are going to be very strange in the future. Can no Uzumaki be even remotely normal?' **_With that the beast descended into the blissfulness of slumber, still thinking on the other creature that shared its prison.

**Start of Chapter 1:**

In the Chunin Exams Stadium a match was taking place. Despite the entertainment of this match, many were hoping the match would end soon, so the could watch the anticipated fight between the last Uchiha, Sasuke Uchiha, and the Kazekage's son, Sabaku no Gaara. The current match was between Naruto Uzumaki, a tan, blonde boy, around 4ft 10" in height, wearing a horrid orange tracksuit, a blue Konoha headband around his forehead, and blue shinobi sandals, the other was Neji Hyuuga, who was around 5ft 3" in height, he wore a khaki shirt, brown shorts, blue shinobi sandals, a black Konoha headband around his forehead, and bandages wrapped entirely around his right arm. The two had been fighting for approximately 25 minutes and neither one was able to make a decisive blow, whether it was the blonde using his shadow clones and famed unorthodox methods, or the Hyuuga with the 10ft. long fate stick in his ass using the famed Byakugan and Jyuuken style. So we begin this story at the fight between the the thirteen and fourteen year olds.

The blonde had fooled the Hyuuga into attacking one of his shadow clones, leaving him open for an attack. But the Hyuuga had a trick up his sleeve, a faint blue aura of chakra appeared lying on his skin, he then turned on the balls of his feet, yelling out, "**Eight Trigrams Palm Rotation**!"

The Rotation technique caused several deep cuts and chakra burns to appear on the blonde's flesh, and with a yelp of pain escaping his lips, he was thrown back several feet away from the techniques epicenter, leaving the Hyuuga untouched and obtaining the fight's first truly decisive blow. While Naruto was stumbling, trying to get back up on his feet, the Hyuuga closed his eyes and said, "As I told you at the beggining of the match Uzumaki, fate has already judged you to be the loser of the match, and now I will carry our its verdict."

The Hyuuga opened his eyes, Byakugan blazing, and rushed at his opponent and initiated one of the Hyuuga's most cherished techniques. He then bombarded the blonde with jyuuken strikes, yelling out the number of strikes as he made them, "2 palms, 4 palms, 8 palms, 16 palms, 32 palms... **Eight Trigrams 64 Palms**!"

At the last strike the Uzumaki was launched back several feet, hitting the ground hard and kicking up a large cloud of dust. The Hyuuga allowed a small, arrogant smirk to show, before he heard the blonde speak and saw him getting up off the ground, "You really think you've won Neji? Remember, I said I was going to show you Hell for what you did to Hinata-san, and I never go back on my word."

Neji shook his head at this, and was about to retort, but was halted from doing so at seeing the expression on Naruto's face, it wasn't one of anger, frustration, or even one of pain, but a smirk. A cold, cruel, sadistic smirk, that promised immense pain to anyone who got in the way of its wielder gaze. He now began to speak, not in the higher tone he was known to speak in, but a deeper, smoother tone, "I must admit though, I thought all that prodigy and genius stuff they said about you was just a load of bullshit, but maybe it's not all wrong."

Neji was, for a lack of a more adequate description, stupefied, he had just performed one of the Hyuuga's most powerful moves on his blonde opponent, and could even clearly see several of his most important tenketsu were shut down by it, he should have been in immense pain, struggling to survive. Yet he could see the blonde with a calm smirk on his face, standing straight up, not even showing a slight sign of discomfort. But he was also worried, from what he had heard the Uzumaki was very brash, slightly stupid, easily-angered, and very unorthodox, but the way he was acting now was the exact opposite, his posture spoke of immense self-control, and his gaze seemed to show a fair level of intelligence, and the fury behind his eyes was well controlled, but just waiting to be unleashed on its target, and Neji knew that target was him. Naruto spoke again, saying, "So I suppose I can't hold back entirely against you. I had planned to uphold this facade until I was promoted to Chunin, but I guess this proves that old saying right, 'Man makes a plan, and God laughs at him.' You're the first person I've actually had a real fight against in my true form, so forgive me if my skills are a tad bit rusty."

Neji stood there in shock, seeing the blocked tenketsu on the blonde being forcibly opened up by a massive surge of chakra flowing throughout his coils like a raging flood. Naruto crossed his arms over his chest in an X shape, while, what seemed to be black and red tendrils covered his person, completly shielding his being from view.

Up in the stands, nearly all of the civilians, and a handful of the ninja, started to sweat and shake from pure fear at the mention of a "true form", believing the blonde to be the Kyuubi no Yoko, they thought he was going to take the giant foxes form and destroy them all. Everyone else, who either didn't know about the Kyuubi being sealed inside Naruto, or didn't think him to be the fox in human form, were pondering what the blonde meant by "true form." And up in the Kage box, the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, known throughout the ninja world as the Proffesor, or the Kami no Shinobi, was watching with a look of great interest, while the man next to him, the Kazekage, was also watching with a mild form of interest at the trick the blonde had kept hidden up his sleeve.

Back down in the arena, Neji was paralyzed from a combination of both the sight and feeling of the ungodly amount of chakra coming up his opponents body. And he gained a slight feeling of fear as the tendrils around Naruto's body started to recede and reveal what Naruto called his true form. Gone was the tanned, sun-kissed blonde, orange wearing ninja, and in his place stood a man who was standing at around 5ft 6", wearing black, steel-toed combat boots, black jeans, black leather gloves with metal on the back of the hands, knuckles and fingertips, and a black hoodie with red tribal marking on the back. His facial features were much different than that of the person who stood where he is before him, there were no whisker marks, his skin was a smooth, natural pale color, his hair was shoulder length, straight, and black with one single red streak around two fingers thick through it, icy violet eyes, and a face lacking any sort of baby fat, with regal features giving him an overall handsome appearance. Overall, with the black clothing, lean, predator-like build, and his icy eyes with a hint of malice and insanity, he was down right intimadating.

**On a path towards Konohagakure:**

A cloaked female figure sensed a massive surge of power, and she knew only one man's power had this kind of feel to. A gentle smile graced her face as she said to herself, "So you've decided to reveal yourself, well my love I'm happy you no longer have to live a lie. And soon I'll be able to hold you in my arms again." Her gentle smile turned into a perverted grin and she gained a small nosebleed. "But don't think I'm going to stop at hugging you, oh no, we're going to do a lot more than that." A perverted giggle escaped her lips, she then resumed her journey towards Konaha.

**Chunin Exams Stadium:**

Neji, recovering from his shock, asked the question on nearly everyones mind, "Who are you?" The now black-clad Naruto merely gave a feral grin, revealing fang-like canines and replied in a mock hurt tone, "Why Neji, I'm hurt, and here I thought we were starting to form such a beautiful friendship. And it's just down right insulting to not recognize Konaha's number one, hyperactive, knucklehead ninja; Naruto Uzumaki." This shocked nearly everyone, many could not comprehend this man in black was indeed the Naruto Uzumaki, but only he had that particular mocking attitude, so a good deal of people were now finding it believable that this man in front of them is indeed the Naruto Uzumaki. Neji asked, "What kind of transformation is this?"

He tried to use his Byakugan to see through whatever genjutsu he tought was at work here. The man in black responded with, "Oh, this is no transformation Neji, this is my real form, and the form you were fighting was nothing more than a disguise to mask a good deal of my strength and decieve my enemies. As for my real power, well, hehehe, where's the fun in just telling you. Tell you what, I'm feeling generous today, so I'll let you have one free hit on me, and then I'll let you feel a part of my true abilities."

He smirked and made a 'come hither' gesture with his right hand and then deposited both of his hands in his jean pockets. Neji would normally make an arrogant comment, but he decided to forego this, and merely go in for the kill. He ran towards Naruto as fast as his legs could carry him and made a half tiger sign with his left hand and then made a jyuuken strike towards his chest shouting out the most powerful Main Branch technique he recreated, "**Eight Trigrams: Chakra Heart Explosion**!"

This caused Naruto to be launched into the wall of the arena, smashing into it so hard that he made an imprint of his person in the concrete. Neji checked his opponents heart and saw that it was nothing more than a pile of bloody mush due to his technique. He sighed in relief and turned to the tokubetsu jonin proctor Genma, about to tell him that he should declare the match over since no one would be able to survive that attack, but was interrupted when he heard, "I'm sorry did you just attack me, or did a mosquito just bite me?"

Neji turned to his left and saw his opponent still embeded in the wall, still having that crazed smirk on his face. Neji reactivated his Byakugan and saw a horrifying sight, what was left of Naruto's heart was consumed by familiar red and black tendrils, causing it to slowly rebuild itself. Neji was about to scream out in horror but he didn't get the chance. Naruto pulled himself out of the wall and ran towards Neji at Gai level speeds, picking him up by his neck and squeezing slightly making it difficult for him to breathe. Naruto saw the look of terror in Neji's eyes and smirked his sadistic smirk. He then said to Neji, "Now what did I say Neji, I said I was going to show you Hell, and I intend to do so. So, in the words of James Heller, welcome to the Red Zone."


	2. Torture and Questions

**A/N: Well here's the fix up of Chapter 2. I hope all you guys and gals enjoy this little fix up, and I'll try to get Chapter 3 out as soon as I can. Now I should mention a few things regarding the harem, the only girls who have gauranteed places are , Tenten, and Fu. The others who I'll try to figure out soon. And since I'll probably get this question a lot I'll say this now, I will not add Hinata to the harem, I kind of want to try a story without her in the harem, I might make her part of it in another story, but not in this one. So yeah, that's decided, if you want to suggest girls for the harem, put them in a review, who knows I might very well pick them. Another thing I should mention is that, yes, Sasuke will abandon Konoha despite me not bashing him. I've got quite a few plans in mind for this story and I can see this really helping me connect some of the points together, so take it or leave it, it's no skin off my nose. With that please read, review, and enjoy the chapter. Last Chapters Word Count: 3,192 words. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Prototype, they are owned by their repective owners, please support the official release, Ja Ne. **

Neji was actually hoping to drop dead, he felt that would be preferable to what was about to befall him**. **After all it's not everyday that someone survives having his heart explode inside his chest and then promises to put you through Hell, and from the look in his eyes, Neji could tell that the man in front of him could deliver on his threat. Naruto turned to the proctor Genma and said, "I should tell you if anybody tries to stop me you'll be taking white eyes place, you hear me?"

Genma nodded slowly in fear, showing he understood what was said, basically, let him beat the shit out of the Hyuuga and then clean up whatever's left of him. Naruto turned to Neji and asked nonchalantly, "So Neji, what's your favorite flavor of punch?"

Neji got a confused look on his face, Naruto continued saying, "Mine's... **DONKEY PUNCH**!"

He proceeded to punch Neji in the face several times, hard. Neji felt like the Caged Bird Seal was activated, there was an incredible amount of pain in his head, and he was sure his nose was broked. Naruto tossed Neji down a few feet in front of him onto the ground, where the Hyuuga tried to get up, most likely to try and put as much distance as he could between him and his torturer. The operative word being "tried." Naruto quickly closed the distance to his victim. Neji tried to make a jyuuken strike to his torturers chest to see if he could at least slow him down a little, sadly, for him at least, Naruto caught his arm, gripping it tightly, he asked with an almost bored look on his face, "So you grew up in the Hyuuga Clan's house huh? You know I grew up in a strange house it was a...** ROUNDHOUSE**!"

He then delivered a kick to the side of the Hyuuga's head, causing him further pain. He then picked up the Hyuuga up by the collar of his shirt and delivered five extremely hard punches to his stomach, and then another five to the center of his chest. He then tossed the Hyuuga into the air and proceed to hit him with a barrage of punches and kicks, causing Neji to vomit up no small amount of blood, he then used an axe kick to launch Neji back down to Terra Firma. After landing, Naruto picked up Neji so the Hyuuga's back was facing his front and asked, "Hey Neji-boy, guess what?"

Neji responded weakly, "W-wh-what?"

Naruto smirked and responded, "Kidney punch!"

And then proceed to deliver multiple, strong blows, to the area of Neji's kidney's, causing even more blood to flow from his mouth, and scream in pain. Naruto then turned him around and and went back to assaulting his opponents stomach with his fists, saying, "I knew you were emo, but you really shouldn't hit yourself."

Neji weakly stammered out, "You-you're hi-hitt-hitting m-me."

Naruto smirked and said, "Oh on the contrary binky boy, you brought this on yourself, you have only yourself to blame."

The black clad man then assaulted the white eyed boy with another barrage of strong blows, causing Neji unbelievable amounts of pain. He then tossed Neji down in front of him, face facing the sky and quipped, "You know, a lot of people like river stomp, but I've always preffered...** CURB STOMP**!"

At the last word he delivered two rib-breaking stomps to the Hyuuga's chest. Neji couldn't even scream he was in so much pain. Naruto looked down at Neji and said, "You know all that fate stuff, or at least the type you believe in, is a load of bull right? If that were the case than I really would be a loser, and your teammate Lee, wouldn't be nearly as strong as he is now. A caged bird eventually tires of his life in prison and uses his beak to escape, you should learn that lesson while you still have a chance."

He turned towards Genma, indicating he should call the match. "Winner, Naruto Uzumaki!"

A lot of the people in the audience clapped and cheered for the once blonde boy's performance. Naruto then turned to the Hyuuga clan head, Hiashi, in the stands and yelled out, "By the way Hiashi, I suggest you grow a pair, man up, and tell Neji the real reason his father was given to Kumo instead of you! Otherwise the Hyuuga clan will be missing a head, if you catch my drift."

He drew his index finger across his throat at the last sentence. Hiashi paled greatly and then got a look of guilt on his face and decided he'd follow the Uzumaki's advice and tell Neji about his father taking his place willingly, and finally giving him his father's last message. The thoughts of the Rookie 12, their sensei's, and the Suna trio ranged wildly but their most prominent thoughts went like this.

Hinata: 'Naruto, is this who you really are?'

Kiba: 'Holy Shit! He _**destroyed**_ Neji! Normally I'd be insulted he held back against me, but after seeing what happened down there, I think I'll just be grateful.'

Shino: 'Interesting, he hid his strength behind a facade of ignorance, I must admit he certainly made the act convincing.'

Shikamaru: 'Even when he's not a blonde he's troublesome. Oh well I was wondering when he'd drop his mask.'

Chouji: ' Wh-whoa, that was incredible.'

Ino: 'Dear Kami, how is anyone our age that strong?'

Tenten; 'Gotta admit, that was brutal, but someone had to pull that stick out of his ass and hit him with it. I have to admit, I'm impressed.'

Lee: 'Yosh, Naruto's Flames of Youth burn brightly, he may have even ignited Neji's. If I recover, Naruto you would be worthy of being called an eternal rival.'

Temari: 'That hot guy is the same blonde guy we met before the exams, yikes, talk about a mindfuck.'

Kankuro: ' Well I'm far from a religious man but... Oh Kami, with thy divine, infinite, wisdom and strength, please make it so I don't have to fight him in the invasion, please, I'm _**BEGGING **_you here.'

Gaara: 'Mother wants your blood Uzumaki, and I will deliver it to her.'

Kurenai: 'Whoa, I've seen a lot of things in my time, but nothing like that, but then again who has?'

Asuma: 'Man, I did not see that coming, but then again who could? Not to quote the Nara's but, this is gonna be troublesome.'

Gai: 'Yosh! Naruto your Flames of Youth burn as bright as Lee's, and they may one day burn as bright as my own!'

Sakura: 'What the... when did Naruto get that strong, has he been hiding it all this time?'

Naruto shunshined up to the competitors box with Shino and Shikamaru. Shikamaru approached and said, "I have to admit, I always thought you were hiding something, but nothing like this."

Naruto gave a small smile and said, "Wow, I actually surprised the famous Nara intellect, I should get and award. But in all seriousness, you should know that deception is a shinobi's greatest tool."

Shikamaru merely shrugged and went back to watching the clouds above the stadium.

**Up in the stands:**

Ino still having a hint of amazement in her voice said, "Wow, I didn't know Naruto was that strong, I mean he didn''t beat Neji, he _**Massacred**_ him. Has he ever done anything like that during your team's training Sakura?"

Sakura merely looked at Ino and said, "No, I've never seen him do anything like what he did down there. I've never seen him punch that hard, move that fast, or hit with such brutality."

Chouji looked at her and said, "Well maybe that's the point, he was probably trying to conserve his power for only when he absolutely needed it. And I guess Neji pushed him to that point, and I can only say one thing to that, poor bastard."

The two girls nodded in agreement at the big-boned boys words, but still pondered as to why he would hide power like that, with power like that he could have been one of the highest ranking genin in their year.

Away from them with Hinata and Kiba, Akamaru was trembling worse than when he first saw what Gaara did back in the Forest of Death, and Kiba and Hinata were trying to calm him down. Kiba looked down at his long time friend, and partner, and asked, "Hey, what's wrong Akamaru?"

Though he had a good idea what it was, Naruto. He had felt it to after all, he had an aura around him that just screamed, 'I'm the alpha, the master of all, defy my word and I'll send you to hell with a smirk on my face.' Plus the young pup was used to Naruto being the nice boy with bright hair who gave him treats on occasion when he went on a pranking spree with his companion, so this Naruto was a humongous left turn to him. All the while in her mind Hinata was having a crisis, the man whom she admired and drew strength from was nothing more than some false persona that was made to be a tool of deception. She wondered if this man was anything like his old persona, and if he was, would he accept her as she was or would he see her as too weak for him.

The Jonin were having their own conversation regarding the former blonde. Asuma took a drag on his cigarette and said, "Man I expected to see some crazy shit in the exams, but nothing like what we just saw. Someone who was thought to be a weak dead last, turning out to be so strong that he survived two of the Hyuuga clans most powerful attacks like they were nothing, and then beating the shit out of a boy who was said to be a once in a lifetime prodigy. Only one word describes it, unbelievable."

The red-eyed Genjutsu Mistress of Konaha, Kurenai Yuhi, said, "Well, you better believe it, there wasn't one genjutsu in place down there, everything you saw was 100% genuine."

Gai, being his usual unusual self said (read: yelled), "There's only one explanation, his Flames of Youth are so hot they have transformed him into a Beautiful Black Beast of Konaha! The way he moved so quickly, and struck with such power, and yet still showed mercy to Neji, and even gave him new advice to live by, the Springtime of Youth has shined on him!"

The other Jonin sweatdropped at Gai's exclamation, but they had to admit that some of what Gai was said was true, this Naruto, the true Naruto was much stronger, and had a lot more potential than the Naruto they thought they knew. And if they had to admit it, they were looking forward to seeing what else he was capable of doing.

Up in the Kage's Box a tokubetsu jonin named Raido shunshined into the box and spoke to the Sandaime saying, "Sandaime-sama, the Uchiha has yet to arrive, should tell Genma to call the match."

The aged Kage took a puff from his pipe and said, "Yes if he can't bother to show up on time, he should be disqualified. The Kazekage raised his hand in a halting gesture and said, "Wait Sarutobi-san, we should postpone this match, many of the most influential figures here came here merely to see the last Uchiha fight my son. We could both lose a lot of business if we don't show their match."

Hiruzen snorted and replied, "That is not how the exam works, no one gets special treatment, just like in a real life mission, if he were to be late to his position on the battlefield it could lead to the death of the rest of his squad," he turned to Raido and said, "tell Genma that Sasuke has been disqualified for his tardiness."

Raido nodded in understanding and left the Kage box, leaving the Hokage to smoke his pipe, and the Kazekage to scowl behind his mask.

The majority of the crowd didn't take the disqualification of the Uchiha too well. Many of them were screaming for the Uchiha to be allowed to compete, or demanding refunds. The competitors took it much better though, Gaara look irritated at losing an opponent before even fighting him, but since his "Mother" was demanding the Uzumaki's blood, and promising him that he would be a much more worthy opponent, he calmed down rather quickly and went back to waiting for his match. The other Suna siblings were irritated since the Uchiha's match was part of the invasion plans, and had now been compromised. Shino and Shikamaru were confused as to why the Uchiha was late when he was always looking for strong opponents in order to get stronger. Naruto merely sighed and said, "Well that's what he gets for letting Kakashi-sensei keep track of time."

Genma used a large burst of Killing Intent (KI) to silence the crowd, then called out the next competitors, "Kankuro Sabaku V.S. Shino Aburame, will the two competitors report to the arena for their match?"

Kankuro scowled and thought, 'Crap, I was supposed to have more time. If I fight now I'll reveal too many of Karasu's tricks, I guess I only have one option.' "Proctor I resign!"

Genma look up and confirmed his resignation from the exams, then announced Shino the winner by forefit. Shino looked dissappointed at not being able to fight but Naruto put his hand on Shino's shoulder and said, "Don't worry buddy, remember, there are still more fights to be had, and I can gaurantee that by the end of the day you'll have had your fill of fighting."

He finished with a smile removing his hand from the bug boy's shoulder.

Down in the arena Genma announced the next match, "Shikamaru Nara V.S. Temari Sabaku, will the two competitors report to the arena for their match?"

Temari used her battle fan to float down to the arena floor and told the lazy Nara to hurry up. Shikamaru looked annoyed that his cloud watching was interrupted, and was about to resign, but other people had other plans. Just as he was about to forefit, he was kicked out of the competitors box and onto the arena floor. Shikamaru was about to yell at Naruto, but stopped when he saw the expression on his friend's face, he was wearing a sickly sweet smile, and a double eye-smile, which all together with the aura he was putting out said, 'Man up and fight or you won't wake up the next morning.' Shikamaru paled at the look and thought for the first and only time that he would rather face his mother when she was angry, rather than face whatever idea Naruto had inside that sick, twisted mind of his that would make Anko green with envy. So he made what could be considered the smartest decision in his life, and decided to fight the wind mistress thinking all the while, 'This is troublesome, but whatever he's cooked up in his head is way, way, more troublesome.'

After the match:

Overall, the match was interesting, Temari was very proficient at long range fighting using effective tactics, high analytical skills, and the pure power in her wind jutsu, and Shikamaru showed the infamous Nara intellect by coming up with plan after plan to capture the Suna girl in his Shadow Possesion Jutsu, ultimately capturing her before he forefit claiming he didn't have enough chakra to continue the rest of the tournament. Shikamaru walked back to the competitors box and went back to his cloud watching. Naruto smirked, Shikamaru had gotten his hidden message to conserve his strength and chakra from his conversation with Shino about him getting his fill of fighting.

After a brief pause Genma called down the next competitors, "Semi-final match, Naruto Uzumaki V.S. Gaara Sabaku, please report to the arena for your match."

Gaara used a sand shunshin to appear on one side of the arena, anticipation and cruel excitement seemed to just roll off of him. Naruto grinned, turned towards his friends and said, "Well guys wish me luck."

He ran towards the opening in the competitors box and jumped out. Naruto landed on the arena floor on his feet creating spider web cracks on the ground, with him completely unharmed. He moved towards the side of the arena opposite Gaara and got ready to fight.

Or he would have, had someone not used a Konaha Shunshin in between him and his opponent, revealing the famed Copy Ninja, Kakashi Hatake, and the last Uchiha, Sasuke Uchiha. The silver haired cyclopes turned towards Genma and asked, "Sorry, are we late?"

Genma replied with, "Yes, in fact Sasuke Uchiha has been disqualified for his tardiness."

Sasuke, looking annoyed at himself said, "Ugh, I suppose that's what I get for not keeping track of time myself. But I have to ask who are you, the only people in the roster who could fight Gaara in the semi-finals was either the dobe or Neji."

Kakashi made a look towards the black haired man saying he had the same question on his mind. Naruto wiped an imaginarey tear from his eye and said in a mock hurt tone, "My own teammate and sensei don't even recognize me, oh woe is me, I think the world hates me."

Kakashi and Sasuke thought only for the briefest moment before they got anime-style white eyes and yelled with a suprised, questioning tone, "NARUTO!"

Naruto merely smirked his usual smirk and said, "The one and only, and as for any other questions you may have, I'll answer at least some of them at a later date and time, but right now I've gotta fight old tanuki eyes over there."

The cyclops and the emo looked like they still wanted to grill him for answers, but decided that they could wait until later. With that Kakashi gripped his students shoulder and shunshined out of the arena and into the stands near his other student. With that out of the way Naruto turned towards his opponent. Gaara had uncorked his gourd and was already letting the sand flow out around him, letting it prepare to either defend him, or spill his opponents blood. Naruto cracked his neck, and then made an intimidation attempt at his opponent by pounding his fists together once, causing a sizeable shockwave around him that kicked up dust, debris, and cracked the ground slightly. As he saw Gaara's, the proctors, and most observers eyes widen in suprise he yelled out with a slightly crazed grin on his face, "Well, getting excited aren't you, well so am I! Proctor, start the match! **LET'S GO WILD!**"


	3. Vessel vs Vessel

**A/N: Well everybody, here's what you've all been waiting for, your reason for living, Chapter 3 of Prototype Maelstrom. In this chapter we'll see the much anticipated fight between Naruto and Gaara, the first usage of Naruto's Blacklight powers, Naruto's first conversation with Kurama in this story, and hopefully a few humorous bits and pieces mixed in here and there. So here's how the harem stands as of now, , Fu, Tenten, Yugito, and (Nibi). I'll probably end up adding a few more girls, so make your suggestions in the reviews, along with what you think of the chapter. And if you could do me a favor, please recommend this fic to a few of your fellow fanfiction readers, please, my creative muse will starve without your reviews feeding it. Last Chapter's Word Count: 3,369. Now onto the disclaimer. **

**Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto and Prototype don't you think I would have just made it like this in the first place? **

Naruto stood opposite his opponent Gaara and flexed his fingers, waiting for Gaara to make the first move and start the battle. Gaara, without even a twitch, sent his sand at his opponent, at what could be described as a much greater speed than what he demonstrated in his match with Lee in the preliminaries. Naruto dashed out of the way of the rapid sand wave and ran through several handsigns and yelled out, **"Fire Style: Pheonix Fire Jutsu."**

With those words he spat out four sizeable fireballs at his opponent. Gaara merely raised his left hand and directed the sand to block each the fireballs, then he transformed the sand into multiple shuriken which he launched at his opponent. Naruto started to weave in between the shuriken, dodging each one and running towards Gaara. Gaara once more launched a wave of sand at his fellow jinchuriki. Naruto smirked, halting his dash, he put his arms, palms facing outward, behind his right side and then thrust outwards, which to everyone's shock caused the sand wave to break as though it had been smashed by an invisible wall. Naruto then rushed forward, getting close to Gaara he tossed out a quick punch which was only narrowly blocked by his opponents sand. Naruto then quickly pulled back his foot and made to kick his opponent, but Gaara evaded by using a sealess sand shunshin. Naruto then pulled a sealing scroll out of his hoodie pocket, biting his thumb and drawing blood, he opened up the scroll and drew his cut thumb across the scroll, releasing a decent amount of water. He then ran through several more handsigns and yelled out, **"Water Style: Water Shark Bomb." **

With that, a shark made out of the once sealed water formed and fired itself, not at Gaara, but at the sand surrounding Gaara. He then ran forward to once more try and assault the Suna jinchuriki. Gaara tried to have the sand move up to protect him, but found it was not responding as quicklly due to his adversaries water jutsu. Naruto appearing in front of him pulled back his fist and punched his opponent in the head. To his shock his opponents head burst into sand, cursing, he quickly jumped into the sky as sand started to rise up around him and try to hold him down. Looking down, he saw Gaara with a bloodthirsty look on his face. Closing his eyes as though he were deep in concentration, his descent seemed to slow while more of the tendrils he was becoming known for seemed to writhe around his right leg, he then lauched himself towards his opponent with a speedy kick, which was once again, to his annoyance, blocked by his opponents sand. Once more he placed his hands behind his right side and pushed out with them, causing Gaara to be flung back several feet. Gaara merely got back onto his feet and launched several large masses of compressed sand at his opponent. Naruto, instead of evading the sand, merely punched each mass of sand that was launched at him, dissolving them back into individual grains. Gaara then made a bird handsign and said in his usual insane monotone, **"Sand Clones."**

This caused much of the sand to rise up off the ground and shape itself into at least ten bodies bearing resemblance to Gaara. Each clone rushed at the black-clad man, its hands shaping themselves into blades, clubs, or spikes. As the first four clones made their way towards the target Naruto rushed forward himself and smashed his fist together, releasing a shockwave around him which destroyed the four sand clones. Two more rushed forward, one with sand spikes for hands, the other with sand blades. The spiked one made a head-on rush at Naruto, who evaded and then delivered an upwards kick which turned it back into a pile of sand. The bladed one made to slash his back, but was prevented from doing so when his target gave him a haymaker with his gloved hand. Three more then rushed at him from different directions and made to strike him, but this was prevented when he scowled and pounded the ground with both of his fists, causing a shockwave to launch all around him, destroying the clones. He looked around himself, searching for the one remaining clone, until he cursed under his breath and made to jump out of the way of the clone coming up from the sand surrounding him, but failed as the clones bladed hand cut through the right sleeve of his hoodie and into his right arm. Naruto cursed and then kicked the clone, effectively dispelling him. He then looked down at his right arm and saw a four inch gash, caked with sand, on his bicep, until more of his tendrils surrounded the wound, repairing both it and the hoodie sleeve. Gaara then looked on with an insane bloodthirsty grin, and said, "Mother and I can tell you're holding back Uzumaki, fight me with your real strength, so that when I kill you and offer your blood to Mother, I can truly exist!"

Naruto looked at his opponent, sighed, and said, "I really do hate this tournament, half the shit I planned on keeping secret seems to have to come out. But I suppose I should be glad that I've found an opponent who's strong enough to force me to use this."

He smirked once more and said, "I guess I'll set my own record against you, Lee was the first to hit you, then I'll be the first to make you **bleed!**"

Naruto then crossed his arms over his chest while more black and red tendrils writhed around his arms, raising his arms above his head he brought them down, looking... different. His arms seemed to be made of the same black and red matter of the tendrils, twisting around in a fashion similar to that of intertwining tree roots. His hands were the most changed though, in place of five fingers he now had four, but that wasn't what was shocking, what was suprising was that each of his fingers were foot long curved metal claws, that seemed sharp enough to slice through steel. The audience had a range of thoughts, the civilians were scared shitless, thinking that he would use these abilities to take his vengeance on them for their mistreatment of him. Most of the shinobi in the audience were not afraid of what he was doing, but wondering how he had done it, to most of their knowledge, there was no jutsu that allowed shapeshifting of that level. The weapon's mistress of Konoha, Tenten Higarashi, had stars in her eyes at the possibility of being able to morph one's own body into some form of a weapon. The Suna siblings, Kankuro and Temari, were scared that someone around their age was actually fighting Gaara on his level, had insane abilities like him, and half the time seemed to be as much of a psycho as their brother. The remainder of Team 7 was wondering how long Naruto had these abilities, and where he had gotten them. The remainder of the Rookie 12 and their sensei's were just wondering when the craziness would that seemed to follow the former blonde would end. Naruto gave his own crazed smirk at Gaara and yelled out, "Well Gaara, you asked for this, remember that when I make you bleed out all over the ground!"

Gaara created seven sand clones in front of him and had them charge at his opponent. Naruto ran forward at three of the sand clones and lashed out with his claws, bisecting each one. One of the remaining four transformed into a highly compressed spear of sand and had one of the other clones launch it at Naruto. The black-clad man merely crossed his claws in an asterisk like pattern and blocked the spear causing it to dissolve into sand, he then pounced at one of the clones and slashed at it, effectively ending its inevitabely short lifespan. The other two then rushed at him, in retaliation he turned on the balls of his feet in a whirlwind fashion, slicing the clones as they neared him. Naruto then grinned once more and pounced at Gaara, attempting to end it all. But apparently Gaara had other plans, as the Gaara Naruto had attacked turned out to be another sand clone. Looking behind him, he noticed that Gaara was in kneeling position making an unknown handsign as sand was rising up around him in the form of a sphere, while an eye made of sand formed in the air above him. Naruto rushed at him as the sphere finished itself and slashed downwards with one of his claws, but the sphere was much stronger than it appeared, as his claws only glanced off the side while several sand tendrils reached out to impale the once-blonde, Naruto then twisted around the sand tendrils, recieving only slightly deep cuts to his sides, rather than the full impalement he would have recieved. He then jumped away from Gaara's sand sphere, his cuts already healing. He then got an annoyed expression on his face and said, "You know, I'm getting really, _**really**_ pissed at having to keep chasing you down, while you just attack me with a bunch of dirt!"

Getting no response he was debating whether or not to use one of his other powers, he did want to keep some secrets to himself, but he had a feeling whatever was going on inside that sand ball was not good at all. He had relented and was about to shift into a more heavy hitting power until he heard a voice in his head saying, **"You know, you could always ask the wise, powerful, and handsome Kyuubi for help."**

He snorted to himself and thought, _' I didn't know there was another Kyuubi, but sure hairball, just direct me to him and I'll ask him_ _for some advice."_

He smirked as he heard a grumbling concerning ungrateful hosts and pathetic meatbags then heard the voice respond, "**Oh you're so damn funny, someone give this guy a comedy award, and when are you gonna stop calling me hairball? What's the point of knowing my name if you're not going to use it?"**

_'You call me meatbag all the time, so when you start calling me Naruto I'll start calling you Kurama. Now what the hell is Gaara doing?'_

**"You do know I'll kill you for that one day, right? Ugh, either way in response to your question about Shukaku, this happens to be a jutsu one of the Shukaku jinchuriki developed in order to draw on more of Shukaku's power since he's even more miserly in giving out his chakra than the rest of us. The jinchuriki will contain themself in the protective sand sphere while using certain hand signs to draw on a good chunk of Shukaku's power, and then when the process is done, he'll gather up a massive amount of sand, which he'll shape into the form of Shukaku, which they'll be in control of. But something strikes me as odd, Shukaku was always a bit of a bloodthirsty, crazy bastard, but he usually wasn't one to curse his jinchuriki with insomnia, a weakened host means it's more likely that both he and his container will die, and the rebirth process is not in the least bit pleasant, hence why we try to avoid it whenever possible, something might be influencing him into being this way."**

_'So, either his seal, or possibly something a previous container did, screwed with his mind enough so that he'd do something he'd never do? And now more questions come to mind, such as, how do I stop the transformation, and why are you helping since you rarely do anything that isn't in __your __best interest?_

**"Quite simple really, I'll loan you some of my chakra, you channel it into your claws and use the increased power to pierce through the protective sand sphere. As to why I'm helping you, maybe I've finally gained some sort of respect for you, maybe even a sense of friendship and brotherhood, giving me a feeling family love that I've never felt before, and now as my way of thanking you I want to help you in any way I- "**

_'You just wanna be able to lord it over Shukaku that not only are you stronger than him, but your vessel is stronger than his as well, don't you? Besides, you hate me.'_

**"...Do you want my help or not?"**

_'Fine, fine, I'll take it.'_

**Inside the sand sphere:**

Gaara was running through several handsigns in order to collect Shukaku's chakra. All the while he was insanely muttering to himself, "I'll tear of his arms so he can't hit back, then I'll rip off his legs so he can't run away, then I'll crack open his head, and I'll let all the blood spill out, then I'll give it all to you Mother. I'm such a good boy, aren't I Mother?"

Inside the seal Shukaku was yelling out for the Uzumaki's blood. But his voice sounded like an echo, like someone else was saying something, and whatever Shukaku said was just him repeating and obeying whatever the voice said.

**Back in the stadium:**

Naruto closed his eyes and let his tenants chakra flow into his body through the seal, feeling the chakra's malicious power flow through him made him feel as though he were invincible, like no one could stop him. He opened his eyes, revealing that the iris had become red, and the pupil was slitted. Many of the shinobi in the crowd who had fought against the Kyuubi recognized the chakra that the black blaired boy letting out and were starting to sweat in fear. Kakashi recognized this as similar to the situation in Wave when Naruto was controlled by Kyuubi's chakra and the instinct to kill, but he saw that Naruto was the one in control, not his hatred, so he relaxed slightly, but was keeping himself ready in case he descended into the fox demon's control. Naruto put the tips of his claws together so that it was similar to a spear point. He then rushed forward as fast as he could. The eye above Gaara's sand sphere picked up on the jinchuriki's movement and the sand moved in response, rushing out to attack Naruto. One tendril aimed at Naruto's shins, but Naruto merely jumped over the sand and continued his dash. Two tendrils aimed themselves at his chest, which he narrowly avoided by parkour rolling under the sand tendrils at the last moment. As the Konoha jinchuriki started getting close, the sand made one last desperate attempt at stopping the danger rushing at its commander, all the sand that was behind him rose up into the air shaping and hardening itself into several long spears, then launched at the jinchuriki. Naruto looked behind him and saw that the spears were coming at him, he was fast approaching the sphere when an idea struck him, he slowed down slightly letting the spears catch up a little bit, just before he reached the sphere he jumped over it, causing the pursuing spears to crash into the sand sphere. Landing on the other side of the sphere, Naruto pivoted to face the sphere, then he thrust out his clawed hand, piercing the sphere and the shoulder of the Suna jinchuriki. Naruto heard a quiet mutter in the damaged sphere, "What, what is this? This warm, wet feeling?"

A short moment passed before a scream sounded throughout the arena, "**IT'S BLOOD, IT'S MY BLOOD!"**

Naruto felt the sand clench around his shoulder, grimacing in pain he charged up enough of Kurama's chakra to damage the Suna jinchuriki, causing another scream of pain. He ripped his arm out of the sphere as what looked like demonic arm made of sand, with blue veins, forced its way out of the opening before receeding back into the dome. Naruto, panting, looked into the hole in the sand sphere and saw a strange eye, it was yellow, with a black pupil in an odd four-pointed star shape, with one dot on each side of the star. The sand then collapsed revealing Gaara with blood leaking out of his shoulder. When all of a sudden, what appeared to be white feathers rained down in the arena. Naruto looked up at the feathers and with a burst of chakra, dispelled the genjutsu around him for a short distance, getting a dark look in his eyes he said, "So, it begins."


	4. The Invasion

**A/N: Hello everybody, I'm back with another chapter of Prototype Maelstrom, you may now scream in joy, or do what ThunderBird8950 did and start bouncing around like a little girl at the sheer badassness of my story. Well anyhow, this chapter will officially give this story over 10K words. I know it's nothing compared to some other authors who have that many words per chapter, but it's still a milestone I'm happy to reach, and it shows I'm sticking to this story to improve my writing and see how this story evolves. I'm still trying to think of a few girls for the harem, so far I have Haku (Female version of course, and in Samui's words... cool), Tenten (Girl with a weapons fetish, perfect match for a man who is literally a living weapon of mass destruction), Yugito (We all wanna see how well this kitten will play with the fox), Matatabi (Catgirl, need I say more), and Fu (... Ok I can't think of anything clever to say, sue me... actually don't, I don't have anything you'd want). Well this will be my take on the Invasion, I hope you enjoy it. And I feel I should say this now, since I know a lot of you want a harem story that doesn't have the cliche CRA in it I've found a way for a harem to work in this story without it, as to what it is you'll just have to wait and see. One last thing, you've definitely got a few questions in mind after the first few chapters of this story, and a few more questions will come up during this chapter, so I'll tell you now, a lot of questions are going to be answered in Chapter 6, a lot of that chapter is going to compose of flashbacks and dialogue, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Onto the disclaimer. Last Chapter's Word Count: 2,945 words.**

**Disclaimer: I can't believe you jerks keep making me say I don't own Naruto or Prototype. I'm gonna go cry in a corner now.**

"Bring it, punk." - Character talking

'Echo.' - Character thinking

_Giberish - Anything relating to flashbacks, "talking" and 'thinking' are the same_

**"Foolish meatbag!" - Biju/Summon/Other talking**

**'I hate you all.' - Biju/Summon/Other thinking**

**"Rasengan!" - Jutsu/Technique**

**The bedroom - Location, Beggining or End of Flashback**

**In the Chunin Exams Stadium**

Naruto deactivated his clawed form as he saw an explosion come from the Kage's Box. He looked over to see Temari and Kankuro grab Gaara and jump away with him. Looking into the stands he saw his teammate Sasuke jump off, most likely in pursue of the Suna's siblings, as well as several of the shinobi in the crowd began to dispel the genjutsu as several of the civilians in the crowd began to undo transformations, revealing them to be Suna or Oto shinobi. Several of the foreign shinobi then shunshined into the village to begin the assault. Naruto caught a kunai that was launched at him by the Suna siblings sensei Baki. Baki ran through several handsigns, creating a blade made of wind chakra in his right hand as he ran towards the black-haired Uzumaki. Baki made to slash at Naruto, who blocked it by swiftly grabbing his right arm and delivered a hard punch to the Suna Jonin's stomach, causing the wind blade to vanish. As Baki grabbed his stomach and fell down to the ground in pain, Naruto then proceeded to say, "You should know that Orochimaru isn't as much of a friend to Suna as you think he is."

Baki looked at Naruto with a mix of questioning and pain and asked, "What do you mean?"

Naruto stepped towards Baki, picked him up by the collar of his flack jacket and placed his hand on his forehead as he said, "Let me show you." A strange black and red chakra surrounded his hand as he touched the Suna jonin's forehead, and from there, Baki conciousness descended into darkness.

**Flashback: Unknown location or time**

_Baki was standing in front of the snake Sannin, to his right was Yoroi Akado, and to his left was Orochimaru's right hand man, Kabuto Yakushi. The snake Sannin opened his mouth and said, "You remember your mission, you are to take the Chunin exams once more to further our plans, from the second exam onwards you will each have your own jobs." He looked towards Kabuto and said, "Kabuto you are to collect more data on the last Uchiha and the other various shinobi in the village. Afterwards, when the finals start, you are to cast the genjutsu to put all of the Leaf shinobi and civilians to sleep, this will act as our forces signal." Seeing Kabuto nod in understanding he looked towards Yoroi, "Yoroi, your job is simple but important, if you are able to, you are to fight the Uchiha after the curse mark has been applied to him, and use your special talents to make him draw on its power." Finally, Baki saw Orochimaru look towards him and say, "Now Misumi, your job is one similar to Yoroi's and shared by the Oto team, after the Uchiha has used the curse mark you are to fight him and see how well he uses its power." _

_Baki felt himself nod along with Yoroi and Kabuto, before Kabuto asked, "Lord Orochimaru, what will you be doing until the final exam?" _

_Orochimaru responded with, "Well it turns out your assumptions were right Kabuto, the Kazekage is having second thoughts about the invasion, and is even considering calling it off. So I'm going to have to have a 'talk' with him." _

_Baki felt shock upon hearing this. He knew the snake Sannin had less mental stability than Gaara, with a bloodthirst to match, so when he talked about his complications with the Kazekage, it could only spell disaster. He then thought back on the month leading up to their arrival in Konoha, the Kazekage had been acting more and more distant and short with people than usual, and if anybody so much as questioned him, the chances of seeing them again were somewhere firmly between zero and no-way-in-hell. He finally came to a conclusion he sure hoped was wrong, but he could tell he was 100% right. With that he could feel the world spinning around him and feel as though existence was fading around him. _

**Flashback End**

Naruto released the now consciousness Baki and let him fall to the ground. Naruto looked down and said, "You saw the memories of one Misumi Tsurugi, one of the snake-pedo's little pawns. Orochimaru killed the Kazekage and took his face in order to take up his identity for roughly a month and a half in order to organize the invasion plans with Suna."

Baki stood up and asked, "How did you obtain this info?"

Naruto smirked and said, "A shinobi's gotta keep his secrets. Also if I were you I'd probably spread the word to the rest of your forces before they end up mincemeat."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you really think I wouldn't tell the village about the invasion plan? Just look around."

The Suna Jonin looked around the stadium and saw what the boy in front of him meant. Nearly every Leaf shinobi chunin rank or higher had dispelled the genjutsu, suprising the foreign shinobi who had been told that only the most skilled shinobi would be able to identify the genjutsu quick enough to nullify it, unless they had some form of warning. The Leaf shinobi had no intention of letting the advantage of their suprise element go to waste and were able to utilize it to either kill or cripple around two dozen or less of the foreign shinobi in the first five minutes. Only now were they getting over the suprise and fighting back full force, but the damage had been done and it would effect them throughout the mission. Suddenly realization struck him, if they knew about this, then they had probably strategically placed shinobi throughout the village in order to minimize the damage, they may have even dealt with the summoners in the forest to prevent the assault with the giant hydra-like snake.

Struggling to get to his feet he said to the once blonde, "I see what you mean. Orochimaru played us like our own puppets, I'll alert my comrades to retreat. If you can, would you spare those of us whom you meet before they recieve word?" He asked, thinking that his request would only be in vain.

Naruto nodded and said, "Don't worry, I intended to spare the Suna ninja, I'll either knock 'em out or capture them. I'll even be a bit generous, I'll see if I can help out Gaara with the voice in his head."

Baki's visible eye widened in surprise, here was a ninja who had his village betrayed by those who had proclaimed themselves allies, and he was willing not only to spare those who had commited treachery, but also help one of their own who had wanted to rip him to shreds not even ten minutes prior to their conversation. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth Baki stumbled back into a standing position and **shunshined** off to find as many of his comrades as he could, knowing those who were fighting in the arena had already signed their death warrants, and were just trying to take as many with them as they could. Naruto looked up at the top of the Kage's box to see it encased in a swirling purple square barrier with ANBU agents around it trying to find a way in.

Naruto merely looked on and said, "You better survive old man, same to you Ero-Sennin. I'd hate to think that I warned all of you about this just so you could die."

He looked out in the direction of the village and saw columns of smoke escaping into the sky, smirked and said, "Well, I guess I'll let Sasuke chase Gaara for a bit then catch up to him, in the meanwhile I could go for a bit of wanton destruction." With that said he **shunshined** out of the arena.

**On top of the Kage's box**

Orochimaru was, putting it mildly, not having a good day. First, apparently someone had found out about the invasion, so several of the Leaf's shinobi had been alerted, and thus were able to plan ahead. Which brought him to his second problem, because his enemies found out about the genjutsu they were able to plan ahead for this and use the surprise element to kill off several of his forces. Third, his former sensei, the Sandaime, had called his former teammate, Jiraiya, to aide him by hiding with them in the Kage's box with them using one of his famous camoflauge jutsu, waiting for Orochimaru to make his move. This caused a major problem, he could handle his sensei since he was no longer in his prime, and he could handle his former teammate on a one-on-one match, but to handle the two at the same time would require powerful help, which brought him to his next problem, his attempt to revive the Shodaime and Nidaime Hokage had failed miserably. The pervert had used two strange seals, that he sensed had some of the Kyuubi's chakra in them, that were able to corode the forms of the previous Fire Shadows and even the seals that bound their souls into their ashen forms, leaving only the corpses of Zaku Abumi and Kin Tsuchi who were the human sacrifices required for using **Edo Tensei**. So yeah, not really a good day for the snake-pedo.

Right now he using the famed Kusanagi blade to block a powerful blow from Sarutobi's bo staff of the monkey king, Enma. When he was distracted Jiraiya had aimed a **Frog Kata** at his side, causing a few of his ribs to break. The snake Sannin recoiled in pain and jumped away from his former associates, going through several handseals he used **Wind Release: Great Breakthrough**, which launched the two away from him. Trying to catch his breath, too late did he realize that Jiraiya and Sarutobi had substituted with **Shadow Clones** effectively avoiding the jutsu, and unknown to the snake Sannin they had each thrown a kunai with a seal tag wrapped around the grip. Orochimaru's eyes widened, knowing that he couldn't avoid them he raised his arms in front of his chest, which would prove to be his biggest mistake. One kunai had hit each arm, and as he bit back a scream he was about to pull out one of the kunai he suddenly felt an immense, burning pain in both of arms. He tried to lift up his arms to see what was wrong with them, but found that he could not move them, and trying had only caused the pain to increase. Looking down he found the seal tags on the kunai were glowing with an evil red chakra, and from the points where the kunai were stuck in his arms, they were darkening and turning purple, as though his arms had died. In shock, he asked, "W-What have you done to me?"

"In all honesty I'm not entirely sure. We got the seals and those kunai from the formerly blonde gaki. You know, the same one you had the oppurtunity to kill back in the Forest of Death, but didn't because you thought he wasn't even a threat to one of your failed experiments," replied Jiraiya with a slightly mocking tone at the last part.

The Sandaime glared at Orochimaru and said, "I've always regretted not killing you all those years ago, you do nothing but cause pain and misery upon every living thing you touch, and you feel no regret for what you've done. And I must admit, I look forward to when you finally die and have to face judgement."

Orochimaru cursed under his breath and signaled with a flare of his chakra to his subordinates the Sound Four to evacuate. The four dropped the barrier and quickly used several powerful smoke bombs to cover the entire rooftop in a thick cloud of white smoke. Utilizing this oppurtunity, they grabbed onto their boss and jumped away. The Sandaime, Toad Sage, and several ANBU tried to follow in pursuit but were stopped when one of the Sound Four, who had six arms spat out several, large, white webs which they had to avoid, which gave the red-headed member an oppurtunity to cast a genjutsu to create several fleeing images, allowing them to escape. As they landed on a nearby rooftop Jiraiya cursed under his breath and muttered, "I can't believe I let him get away again."

Sarutobi looked at his student and said, "It's fine, thanks to the seals on the kunai we were at least able to disable his arms for a time. Which raises a few question about your godson that I hope he'll answer."

Jiraiya nodded, both of them clearly remembered how only two weeks ago someone had appeared in the Sandaime's office and told them of Orochimaru's invasion plans and gave them the seals they used against Orochimaru.

**Flashback: Hokage's Tower, two weeks ago**

_Jiraiya had just arrived in the Hokage's office to speak with his old teacher. Walking up to him he asked, "So teach, what did you call me here for?"_

_Sarutobi raised an eyebrow in confusion and said, "I didn't call for you. You already told me about your plans to train Naruto two weeks ago, and you already gave me your spy reports. Why would I need to call you?" _

_Jiraiya got a confused look on his face and was about to ask another question before he and his old teacher heard the sounds of bodies hitting the floor in the room. Looking around, they found the four ANBU members that were stationed in the room were all unconcious on the floor. Sarutobi quickly removed his Kage robes revealing his battle armor while his student was already molding chakra, preparing to fight. The two were standing back to back until they heard a mocking voice, "Wow, you two need to calm down, high blood pressure's not good for people your ages." _

_They looked around and saw someone neither recognized sitting on the window. He looked to be in his early teenage years, with pale skin, his entire attire was mostly black, as was his hair, save for one red streak in it, as well as icy violet eyes. He looked at the two of them with a look of amusement and continued, "Also, little note to you old man, get better bodyguards. I may have had the element of surprise, but I shouldn't have been able to knock out four members of the Leaf villages supposed 'elite' special forces." _

_"Who are you," the aged Kage asked, still on guard should the stranger try to make any hostile movement. _

_The boy merely gave another amused smirk and said simply, "Possibly your best friend right about now." _

_The two older shinobi gave a look to him elaborate further. The black haired youth merely gave an exhausted sigh and said, "If you want specifics, such as a name, I'm afraid I cant give them to you yet. I've got way too many plans to be giving out my identity this early." _

_The two kept their guard up despite the fact the youth had not made one motion to even so much as get down from the window sill. The black haired youth gave a theatrical sigh and said, "Oh, how far the Leaf has fallen, a man once heralded as the __**Kami no Shinobi**__ can no longer tell when his own village is in danger." _

_The white haired duo's eyes widened in surprise before Jiraiya asked, "Let me guess, Orochimaru's behind it, isn't he?" _

_The boy merely rolled his eyes and said with sarcasm practically 'dripping' off his voice, "Wow that's amazing. How'd you figure that one out." _

_After that the black haired youth stepped off the window sill and onto the office floor. Placing his hands behind his head in a sign of peace he began to elaborate further, "As the super pervert there said, Orochimaru is indeed plotting to destroy the Leaf. But the thing you two don't know is how he plans on doing it, and if you'll give me naught but an hour or so of your time I can explain further, and possibly save a lot of lives."_

_The old duo looked at each other before lowering their guards slightly and saying, "We will listen to what you have to say, but make one hostile movement and your life shall be over." _

_The unidentified boy smirked before lowering his hands to his sides. For around an hour he began to tell them of Orochimaru's plan in great detail, how he had positioned several of his lackey's throughout the village, how he had taken the Kazekage's identity to get the Suna shinobi to aide him in the invasion, how he planned to use a powerful genjutsu to make it difficult for the shinobi in the Chunin Exams Stadium to fight back, how he planned to use the Shukaku vessel to cause widespread destruction to the village, how he was going to place summoners outside the village walls to summon a giant snake to attack in conjunction with Shukaku, and lastly, how he planned to assassinate the Sandaime using the Nidaime's kinjutsu to resurrect the dead. By the end of the little speech, not having sensed even a single lie, the two were completely shocked, they had never thought that Orochimaru would actually make such a bold attempt on the Leaf, and if they had to admit it, the two of them would have never seen it coming._

_While the two were still stunned, the unknown boy withdrew four seal tags from his hoodie pocket and gave them to the Toad Sage. Pointing to the two in his left hand he said "The two you have in your left hand are meant to deal with the kinjutsu, don't worry about the specifics, just roll with it." Pointing to the right hand he continued, "These two are meant to strike an enormous blow against Orochimaru. As for what they do, well, let's just say if I were you I'd try to hit either his chest or his arms." _

_Looking over the seals, Jiraiya could tell that these were very complex seals, and whoever made them must have taken around two weeks to make them all. As to what they did, he couldn't tell, the designs were unfamiliar to him, and the ink was different as well, instead of the usual black, it was a bright red color. Jiraiya looked up and asked, "I know you don't want to answer this, but who are you, and how did you find out about this?"_

_The boy looked at the two and replied, "I already said I can't tell you who I am yet, but I can gaurantee after the Chunin Exams are over, you'll know exactly who I am. And as to how I know, well, you talk to people to gather your info, I have less... gentle methods of finding out what I need to know." Giving a dark chuckle at the mention of his methods. _

_The two older shinobi looked at each other before the Sandaime gave a respectful bow to the boy and said, "Thank you, you have no idea how much suffering you've spared." _

_Jiraiya noticed the boys scowl, as though he hated the idea of sparing the villagers of suffering was one of the last things he wanted to do. He quickly recomposed himself before any questions were asked and with one last comment said, "You'll know where to find me when the Exams are over, and from there I'll answer your questions." _

_With that he ran towards the window and jumped out, leaving the two behind. They briefly considered chasing after him, but decided against it. The two looked towards each other and with a nod decided to go home, they would have a lot of work to do in order to minimalize the damage from the invasion. And, somewhere deep in their minds, they could tell that there was going to be a massive shift in this village. As to what it was, they didn't have a clue._

**Flashback End**

They recognized the form Naruto took after being hit by Neji as the same man who had warned them of the invasion. This of course answered the question they had during the meeting concerning who he was, but raised quite a few questions. Like how did he obtain the abilities he demonstrated earlier, how long had he put up that mask, how was he able to make such complex seals, and how did he find out about the invasion? The two heard an explosion off in the distance and decided that they would ask him later. Each of them nodded at each other and **shunshined**, ready to protect the village.

**Scene Change: Konoha Village, near the gates**

Naruto was on edge of a building overlooking the village gates, below Konoha shinobi were facing off against the shinobi of Otogakure and Sunagakure. Smirking to himself Naruto backed up before he ran to the edge and jumped up into the air. At the apex of the jump he got a look of concentration on his face as tendrils began to writhe around his right leg and then he began his descent. Hitting the ground, a shockwave rang out from the point where his foot hit the ground, causing several of the foreign shinobi to be flung back, and the ground beneath his feet to shatter. Several of the Oto shinobi recovered quickly and charged at him. Naruto merely rolled out of his standing position to one of the charging shinobi and uppercut him into the air, a red light trailing behind his fist as he swung it. Quickly pivoting on his feet he kicked the Oto nin charging at him from behind, noticing several of the foreign shinobi trying to surround him, he smashed his fists together launching them away from him. The Konoha shinobi that had been stunned by the arrival of the Uzumaki quickly shook the cobwebs out of their heads and began to resume their fight against the foreign nin. Naruto saw another two Suna near him trying to get back up off the ground, rushing over to them he quickly chopped them on the neck then tossed them away from the main battle area. Turning back to the battle at hand he rushed towards two Oto nin that were attacking from a distance with shuriken. He smashed his fist into the skull of the Oto nin on the left, effectively ending his life. While he was still in shock, Naruto grabbed the Oto nin by his neck and lifted him up into the air as he tried to pry apart the Uzumaki's iron grip. Naruto looked up at the struggling man in his hand, gave him an evil smirk and said, "You know, it's remarkable for you to help out a village that's not even your own."

Naruto then drove his right hand into the chest of the Oto nin, causing him to scream out in agony. Naruto dropped the Oto nin onto the ground where he began to clutch his chest and writhe in unbearable pain. If anybody looked close enough they would notice a strange black and red aura leaking out from the hole in his chest. Naruto smirked his usual evil smirk, drawing back his leg, he kicked the Oto nin into a group of his friends and shouted out, in a humor filled tone, "Don't forget to write!"

As the Oto nin collided with the group, tendrils sprouted from his chest and wrapped up the group. Several more tendrils began to sprout out from the group and began to grab everything in sight, fallen concrete, dead bodies, fallen water towers, and everything else you'd find on the battlefield, and pull it towards the group, causing it to collide with them with incredible crushing force, turning them into nothing more than a big mess of paste. Reveling in the carnage he didn't notice one of the Suna nin sneaking up behind him with a wooden board, about to strike him. Alas, it was not meant to be, as he made to swing the board, several senbon hit him in the neck, paralyzing him. Naruto looked down at the shinobi behind him and noticed the senbon needles in his neck, eyes widening he looked around until he looked up at the top of the villages gates and gazed at a cloaked figure standing on top of them. Noticing the figure he quickly ran up the side of the gate to the top and walked towards the figure. The figure looked towards the black haired Uzumaki, smiled a gentle smile, and said in a beautiful feminine voice, "Glad to see you dropped the disguise, but I thought you were going to keep it up a bit longer."

Naruto gave a sheepish smile and said, "Well things didn't exactly go as planned, and last time I checked you didn't really seem to mind this form."

The figure merely smiled again and removed the cloak, revealing a gorgeous feminine figure, clad in black shinobi sandals, tight black jeans, and a black tanktop with icy blue tribal marking on the back. Her face was, for want of a better term, angelic, with smooth, pale skin, doe brown eye that seemed to have an almsot icy appearance to them, her hair was black, with two bangs framing her face, and the back was held up in a white bun holder and two pins. She gave her own sheepish smile and said, "True, all too true. But I'm happy to see you love."

Naruto closed the distance between the two of them gave her a kiss on the lips, hugged her close and said, "Me to Haku. I'm so glad to have you back."

The two seperated as Haku asked, "So, are you gonna tell me what's going on, or are you just gonna let me guess?"

Naruto responded with, "Short version, Suna and Oto are invading Konoha because of a plot of Orochimaru's design. I told the Hokage about the plot, a bunch of plans were made, and now here we are, standing on top of the village's gates." He gave a smirk at his humorous shortening.

Haku rolled her eyes and asked, "Well, anything else I should know?"

"Yes actually, Shukaku's jinchuriki escaped into the forest along with his siblings, currently they're being pursued by my teammate Sasuke, and I've gotta go save him before Shukaku takes over and kills him. And if you'd like you can help out here in the village, just remember this, capture the Suna nin, and the Oto nin, well, you can do whatever you want to them."

Haku nodded and was about to jump into the fray, but paused for a moment before kissing Naruto on the lips and saying, "Consider that a bit of motivation, come back and we'll do a lot more of that and then some."

Saying the last part with a seductive purr, she gave one last saucy wink and jumped off the gates and into the battle. Naruto stood there with a bright red blush on his face, in his mindscape Kurama was laughing his ass off. Eventually he recovered and looked out at the forest surrounding Konoha, sighed and said, "Now I gotta go searching through this massive freaking forest for a psycho with a demon in his head who wants to tear my head open. Joy."

With that he leapt off the gate and into the forest, starting his search for the Shukaku jinchuriki.


	5. Naruto VS Gaara, Shukaku, and Shukaku?

**A/N: Hey there all you faithful readers, and to you new readers, welcome to Chapter 5 of Prototype Maelstrom. On a completely unrelated note, I saw The Hunger Games recently and I have only one thing to say, it was AWSOME. It was very faithful to the book's plot, the actors really made their rolls come to life, and it was just overall an amazing movie, I highly suggest you watch it. Well, now that my Hunger Games high is over I'll get back to the previous topic, in this chapter we have Naruto fighting against a Shukaku-fied Gaara, some of Naruto's infamous witty humor, and the display of a few of Naruto's powers. In case you're wondering, here's the harem as it stands now, Haku, Tenten, Yugito, Matatabi, Fu, Chomei, Tayuya, and Konan, whether or not there will be any more, I'm still trying to decide. Now I should tell you, I'm probably gonna be a bit late in updating next week, I'm going on a trip my family goes on every year for Easter, and I'm not taking my laptop with me, so you might need to wait a few extra days for Chapter 6. But I think the wait'll be worth it, in Chapter 6 we're gonna see a lot of questions answered, like how Naruto gained the virus' power, how Haku's alive, and a few other things, so please be a bit patient. Last Chapters Word Count: 5252 words. Now onto the disclaimer. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Prototype, there I said it. Are you happy?**

Sasuke was battling against Gaara... if you could call what was in front of him Gaara. The thing in front of him seemed to be made entirely of sand, with blue vein-like markings all around its body, it had yellow eyes with a square pupil with four dots surrounding it, black sclera, and the tattoo for "love" on his forehead. The only part of it that seemed to be Gaara were its legs, which were still human in appearance. The beginning of the fight didn't start off that well, and it had only gotten worse from there. Over the last month he had trained with Kakashi in order to gain a better handle on his chakra control and his **Sharingan**. By the end of it he had learned his sensei's one and only original technique, or at least a weaker version of it, the** Chidori.** He was capable of using it twice in one day, which was usually more than enough, but in this case it wasn't. He had already used it twice on the being in front of him and it healed from both strikes and went right back to fighting as though it had never been injured. He knew if he used it a third time, the curse mark on his neck would activate, and he'd be in way too much pain to even fight against this monstrosity that was once Gaara. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, he had a several **Katon** jutsu, and one or two special **Taijutsu** moves in his arsenal, but in this case it was. The sand beast seemed to be utterly immune to all of his **Katon** technisques, and up close maneuveurs were complete suicide. So right now, evasive maneuveurs were pretty much his only option.

He leapt back several feetas Gaara extended one of his arms to strike him, narrowly avoiding it. After landing he withdrew several kunai from his pouch and threw at his adversary. Gaara merely swatted them away as though they were bothersome flies, and flew at the Uchiha. Sasuke used his **Sharingan** to analyze the movement and evade the attempted attack at the last second and threw a few shuriken at it, which only bounced off of the creatures sand hide, leaving it completely unharmed. Sasuke cursed as the creature focused on its attention on him once more and launched several sand shuriken at him. He managed to evade several of them, but a few of them had left deep cuts on his arms, legs, and one on his left cheek. Landing on a tree branch he threw down a smoke bomb and made a quick escape, hiding behind a tree several yards away.

While he was trying to catch his breath, he heard Gaara yell out, in his familiar insane tone, "**Come out and play Uchiha! Or are you scared of big, bad Gaara? If this is the best you can do then you wouldn't even prove my existence for a second. You're nothing compared to that teammate of yours. And you'll be nothing but a warm-up for when I kill him."**

Sasuke looked down at that. He had barely been a challenge to Gaara, someone he had spent a whole month training to defeat. He thought to himself, 'Is this all I'm capable of? Am I really this weak? If I can't defeat him, then I'll never be a match for Itachi.'

He grit his teeth and made his decision. He hopped back up to one of the higher tree branches and went through three handsigns, then held his right wrist as lightning seemed to dance in his palm, and the sound of a thousand chirping birds sounded. Noticing him, Gaara charged at the Uchiha, ready to kill him, and then search out the Uzumaki to slake his 'Mother's' thirst for his blood. Sasuke, **Sharingan** blazing, made a beeline towards Gaara. As the two got closer, Sasuke dodged at the last possible second and slashed at his adversaries right arm, and yelled out, **"Chidori," ** effectively cutting Gaara's sand arm in half along the length. Sasuke cursed in pain as his curse mark started to spread along most of his right side, causing him no small amount of pain.

Gaara himself screamed as he himself felt pain at having his arm sliced by the Uchiha's **Raiton **jutsu. Though, this only lasted for a brief moment before he let out an insane laugh as the sand arm started to mend itself. **"Hahahahahahahaha! This is what I've been looking for, what I've craved! The blood of those who can actually injure me, first the Uzumaki, and now you! Yes, yes! This is what I've been looking for,"** he yelled in glee.

He gave one more insane grin, and charged at the Uchiha. Sasuke saw Gaara come at him in slow motion, due to his bloodline still being active. He thought this to be the very epitome of irony, he could see his opponent coming at him, read his movements, knew how he was going to attack, and he had the reflexes to evade. But, it was all for naught due to the accursed curse mark keeping him stationary because of the pain. He closed his eyes and waited for his life to end.

Gaara jumped at the Uchiha, bloodlust apparent in his eyes. He wanted this more than he wanted anything else, to kill someone who had injured him, the ultimate proof of his existence. That despite the fact he could be injured, he could never be killed, never be defeated, and no matter what he would always be victorious. Nearing the target he raised up his claws, and made to end the Uchiha's life.

Just as he was about to end his opponent's life, he heard a cry of, **"Dynamic Entry!"**

Naruto appeared and delivered an aerial kick to the side of Gaara's head, propelling him fifteen feet away. Landing next to his teammate he turned to Sasuke and said, "You have no idea how hard it was to find you. I hope you appreciate me saving your life."

Sasuke turned to him and asked, "We're nearly a mile out in the middle of nowhere. How the hell did you find us?"

"Red's demon chakra is very powerful, anyone who has even the slightest sensory talent could find him." He looked down at his friend and noticed the marks spread across his teammates right side. "So you ended up activating the snake-pedo's hickey, what a joyful experience this fight must have been."

Sasuke gave Naruto the stink look, shook his head, and said, "Listen Naruto, we need to get out of here. This guy isn't normal, I used three **Chidori's** and several **Katon** jutsu on him, but he just shrugs it off."

Naruto merely shrugged and said, "Yeah, I know he ain't normal. But the difference between you and I is that I'm not normal either, and I can handle him."

"Are you sure he'll go after you when he's got easier prey in me?"

**"UZUMAKI! I'LL HAVE YOUR BLOOD!"**

Naruto merely turned to his teammate with a raised eyebrow, and asked, "Does that answer your question, or do you need more proof?" Not giving him the oppurtunity to respond, he chopped Sasuke on the neck, effectively placing him into unconciousness' firm grasp. Making a **Shadow Clone**, he picked up his teammate and handed him to his doppleganger. "Make sure he gets to safety. And dont forget to collect 'that.' Handing his clone an empty syringe he sent it and the emo away.

Sensing a figure charging at him from behind he raised his right arm in defense as a large, clawed arm crashed into it. Smirking at the figure attached to the arm he said with mocking and humor apparent in his voice, "Woah there Sandy. Gettin' a bit excited aren't you?"

Gaara jumped back several feet and yelled out, **"Mother wants your blood Uzumaki, and I'll give it to her! No matter the cost!"**

Snickering he said, "'Mother?' So Shukaku's a crossdresser? Hehe, oh Hairball's gonna get a kick outta that one."

Gaara growled, which was probably pretty easy since he was more beast than man at this point, and yelled out, **"Just shut up and DIE!"**

Gaara launched a barrage of sand shuriken at his opponent who merely pushed his palms outward and destroyed them. Naruto then charged at Gaara and delivered a strong blow to his opponenet who blocked it with his arm. Cursing, he used the recoil from the punch to backflip into the air and deliver an axe kick to his adversaries head. Jumping back, he once more cursed, seeing that his attacks had done very little actual damage to the Shukaku-fied Gaara. Though not one to be dettered from any action, he once more took the initiative and charged at his fellow jinchuriki. Gaara swung his arm, which extended and forced his opponent to halt his charge and block the incoming arm with both of his. Though this still launched him away several feet, slightly disheveled.

Landing on his feet, he wiped some of the sand off of his hoodie sleeves, and looked at Gaara with a calculating look before grinning a wicked grin. He proceeded to say, "You know you're fun. I'm not saying I enjoy your personality, not that I'm much different, I enjoy a good mass homocide at times as well, but you keep pushing me to use more and more of my tricks. Well, either that, or I'm just too eager to hold back. So, as my form of a thank you, let me show you a neat trick I picked up."

A mass of tendrils began to writhe around his right arm, and when they receeded, the sight shocked even the sand beast. It looked a lot like a spine, it was still as long and thick as his arm used to be, but it was now all black, and had small, silver blades protruding all along its length, probably three inches long and a half-inch wide, and in place of a hand, it held one blade that was as big as his hand was, wickedly sharp, and wickedly deadly. Giving his own insane grin he swung his arm at Gaara, and the odd thing was it seemed to extend to a length that should have been impossible for it. He jumped out of the way, but saw what the arm had done. It had smashed into the main trunk of the tree he was previously in and had seemed to pierce nearly six inches into the trunk. Naruto gave one of his familiar insane grins and said, "I call this, the **Whipfist**."

Eyes widening, he thought quickly that he should, by no means let that thing hit him. After that the two had started an intricate dance of extending limbs, each one trying to crush/slice the other. But for Naruto this was merely a distraction. He made several sealless **Shadow Clones** and made them hide in trees near the location of where he was trying to force Gaara to go. To his satisfaction it worked, he made one last swing with his whipfist and forced Gaara to jump back. Smirking he jumped several yards back trying to put a fair bit of distance between him and his opponent. Gaara merely looked on in confusion, until he felt several things wrap around him. Looking around him he noticed around twelve Naruto's launching their own whipfists at him, wrapping around him rather than actually stabbing or smashing him. The clones then made their own evil smirks that scared even Gaara. Each of them then said one, single word that made Gaara's eyes widen, **"BOOM!"**

Naruto looked on with an amused smirk as he saw several large explosions going off around Gaara. As smoke clouded his vision he made to make his way towards Gaara and see if he could fix his little sleeping/bloodlust/fucked-up-voices-in-his-head problem before he felt a massive spike of a very powerful chakra. His smirk faded his eyes widened and he started to say, "Oh fu-," before he was cut off by multiple massive waves of sand rising off of the ground and collecting in one location, creating a giant mass of sand, which started to shift and change itself until it was something you wouldn't believe existed. It was a massive, sandy-brown colored tanuki, with dark blue markings all over its face, body, and tail. It had a jagged concave mouth and its eyes were black and empty, just like the deep, dark void. And on top of its head, was Gaara, no longer looking like the sand beast, submerged up to his waist in the sand on top of the massive creature's head.

Naruto's disposition immediately changed upon seeing the massive being in front of him. The insane glimmer in his eyes died out completely, his posture became more gaurded, ready to either attack or defend, and his gaze became more strict and serious. He looked up as he heard Gaara yell out, with his voice still sounding demonic, **"DON'T YOU REMEMBER UZUMAKI, I SAID I WAS GOING TO GIVE YOUR BLOOD TO MOTHER, NO MATTER THE COST!"** Letting out one last insane cackle, he placed his hands in a ram handsign and screamed, **"FEIGNING SLEEP JUTSU!" **With that the grin fell off his face, his eyes became pure white, no pupil, no irides, just pure, empty white. The opposite could be said about the giant sand beast, the sclera were still pure black, but it gained yellow irides with pupils in the form of a black four-pointed star with four black dots surrounding it.

All was silent for a moment, before the beast yelled out, **"WOOHOO, I'M FREE, FINALLY FREE," **it looked down briefly, gazing at the black-clad Uzumaki glaring at him, **"AND HERE'S SOMEONE I WANNA KILL. AND HE'S KURAMA'S VESSEL TOO. THIS IS JUST MY LUCKY DAY, I GAIN FREEDOM, AND I GET TO SMASH KURAMA AND HIS LITTLE PET TO PASTE!"**

Naruto let out a low growl and yelled out, "SHUKAKU, I'm giving you just one warning, get back in the seal and I won't force you back in there!"

Shukaku merely passed it off as nothing more than the human trying to bullshit him and inhaled deeply before smashing its stomach with its right paw and yelled out, **FUTON: DRILLING AIR BULLET!"** The massive bullet of wind chakra began to carve its path through the forest in the Uzumaki's direction. Eyes widening, Naruto began to sprint madly away from the **Futon** jutsu, a strange red smoke trailing behind his form as he ran. Seeing a large boulder rooted in the ground, he quickly jumped behind it as the giant bullet crashed into the rock, creating a massive shockwave.

Shukaku looked down at the path of destruction his jutsu caused and noticed that the Uzumaki was still alive. Shukaku then picked up several trees in its massive palm and flung them towards the Uzumaki.

Naruto, looking out from behind the boulder, saw the massive amount of trees Shukaku chucked at him. Steeling his nerves, he jumped out from behind the boulder and flung his whipfist at one of the approaching trees and had the claw hook onto it. Jumping into the air he allowed the arm to retract, dragging him to the tree. Landing on the still flying tree, he wrapped his arm around it and hopped down from it, and with one mighty toss he released his hold on the tree, propelling it towards Shukaku, more specifically his eye. The tree planted itself firmly in Shukaku's cornea, yet Shukaku only -much to Naruto's displeasure- laughed as though it had felt nothing.

Naruto cursed to himself. Taking advantage of Shukaku's laughter he quickly jumped behind the boulder once more. Taking a moment to steady his nerves he decided he needed a bit of help dealing with Shukaku, and what better help than from the tanuki's brother.

'Hey Hairball, I need a bit of help here.'

Kurama shifted himself in the seal, sighed, and asked, **"What do you need now Meatbag?"**

'I just planted a tree in Shukaku's eye and it did nothing. Is this thing capable of feeling pain?'

**"Not really, this is a sand construct of Shukaku feeding off of his vessels psyche, in short it feels no pain. But the threat doesn't stop there, as I said, he's feeding off of his vessels psyche, if he's not stopped soon enough then he'll completely consume his vessel, and finally be free."**

'Shit, how do I stop it then?'

**"You see his vessel on top of his head? You need to wake him up, if he's conscious then Shukaku can't feed of off his psyche. I'd say one good clock on the noggin' should do it." **

'Well, it's worth a shot.' Steeling his nerves, Naruto jumped out once more and charged towards the giant tanuki. Shukaku tried to halt the jinchuriki's progress by more simple means since he didn't yet have access to all of his power, so he did what he could to halt the boy's progress. He sent out waves of sand, tossed more trees, and used more air bullets, alas they all failed. If he used the sand he would just use that palm technique of his to blow them away, and if he used the trees or bullets he would just dodge them by jumping or rolling around them. In one last desperate attempt he lifted up his right paw and made to smash the Uzumaki into paste. However the Uzumaki used this to his full advantage, with all of his leg strength, he propelled himself backwards as the paw came down. Taking advantage of this he used his whipfist once more, strecthing it much farther than before and having it anchor itself on Shukaku's right shoulder and drag him up to the top.

Landing firmly on Shukaku's shoulder Naruto looked at the unconcious form of Gaara. Naruto scowled, he didn't want to resort to using the whipfist on Gaara, after all the thing was covered in blades, it could really hurt the guy. But seeing as Shukaku could control sand, and his body was made of the aforementioned material, trying to charge at him would probably end with him trapped in Shukaku's belly for eternity, so he made his choice. Jumping up into the air, he launched his arm at Gaara, but he twisted at the last moment so that flat of the blade on the end only slapped him, hard. Gaara seemed to gain some form of consciousness back, his eyes were still white, and he wasn't really saying anything. As Gaara began to make the ram seal again, Naruto made one last swing with his arm, slapping the Suna jinchuriki back into the waking world. As Shukaku's form began to crumble he heard the tanuki demon yell out, **"NOOOO! NO WAY, I JUST GOT HERE! DAMN YOU UZUMAKI, IF I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN, I'LL CRUSH YOU UNTIL THERE'S NOT EVEN DUST LEFT!"**

With that, Shukaku began to crumble back into sand. Gaara began to fall but righted himself at the last moment and landed on top of a nearby tree. Naruto too landed on a nearby tree and shifted his arm back to normal and noticed Gaara glaring at him. Gaara yelled out, "No, no, I won't die here! I will never cease to exist!"

As he finished, he lunged at Naruto who merely glared at him and lunged as well. The two met in midair, Gaara landed one blow to the side of Naruto's face, and Naruto planted his fist firmly in Gaara's stomach, causing Gaara to cough up blood. The two then fell back down to the sand covered Terra Firma, Gaara flat on his back, and Naruto on his own two feet. As Gaara began to struggle to get back up he felt a hand grasp his throat with an iron grip. Looking down at his captor he saw Naruto glaring directly at him. He began to struggle but Naruto lowered him slightly before punching him square in the stomach, then once on each side of his face. Naruto then looked Gaara square in the eye and said, "I'm doing this to help you Gaara. So let me in."

With that said Naruto grasped Gaara's forehead as black and red chakra surrounded his hand and Gaara's head. And the two then felt themselves fall into their respective mindscapes.

**In Naruto's Mindscape:**

Naruto woke up on the floor of his sewer of a mindscape. Getting up he looked around to get his he was once more in front of his tenant's cage. Inside the cage was the mightiest of the Biju, Kurama, the Kyuubi no Yoko, sleeping soundly. Looking around Naruto spotted something out of the ordinary, a door. The door looked to be made of sandstone, and was ten feet in height, and six feet in width. Walking towards the door he saw no handle so he pushed and saw nothing but darkness beyond it. Gazing into the darkness he heard what sounded like a raging sandstorm. Making his choice, he walked into the darkness.

**Gaara's Mindscape:**

As sight returned to him, Naruto began to look around the inside of the mindscape, he saw it was very different than his own. For one it wasn't a sewer. It was definitely dark like his, that was for sure, Hell if you looked all around you'd see nothing but darkness all around you. The darkness seemed to act like some sort of wall of the mindscape. Inside the darkness though, was Shukaku's prison. Inside it was like a desert, sand, sand, sand, and, oh look, more sand, all blowing around in all directions, one big sandstorm. Looking closely, Naruto saw what he was looking for, Shukaku himself, even in here he screamed for his blood, and the blood of all beings be spilled. Shukaku's bondage was clearly less than that of most other Biju, the only thing that seemed to hold him back were two chains, one big chain that wrapped around his neck that attached to a ring on the dark wall, and one small chain that seemed to be attached to a kunai with a seal tag on it on top of his head that stretched to the top of the large ring on the wall. To Naruto the small chain just screamed, "I don't belong here!"

As quitely as he could, he moved as quickly as he could along the circumfrence of the wall, trying to avoid Shukaku's sight. After several minutes he began to get close to the ring, as he was about to start dashing up the side of the wall, he heard something suspicious, he heard another voice here. He noticed whatever Shukaku was saying, was nothing more than a repeat of whatever the other voice was saying. He needed to check this out. He began to dash up the side of the darkness, up to the ring which restrained Shukaku.

With every step he took towards the ring which restrained Shukaku, he heard the voice grow louder and stronger. As he reached the ring he leapt onto the top of the ring and saw something he wish he hadn't. He saw a man yelling out cries of wanting blood and suffering, and the man looked about as appealing as what he was saying. He seemed to be garbed in a long tan robe that resembled a monk's, with a long chain of prayer beads wrapping around his right shoulder to his left thigh. He seemed to be very lanky in appearance, little more than skin and bones, with very wrinkled skin that was lightly tanned. And his facial features were just as appealing, his hair was white and wild, sticking up in nearly every direction and sand falling out of it with every movement. He had large black bags around his teal colored eyes. The rest of his features were thin and scarred up as though he had went through a meat grinder. But the most interesting feature was the thin chain wrapped around his neck, the same thin chain connected to Shukaku.

The elderly man looked at Naruto, gave an insane grin, and screamed out, **"You're here Uzumaki, so nice of you to just offer yourself to me and my pet,"** gesturing to Shukaku at the last part.

Naruto scowled at the old man and asked, "Who in the nine Hells are you?"

**"I'm Shukaku the Sand Priest, not to be confused with Shukaku the Ichibi,"** Naruto nodded to himself at this, now he understood why some people thought that a corrupt priest was sealed inside of Gaara, and not the Biju, **"but that's not the point here. The point is that you've come to freely sacrifice yourself to me, so rare, no one lets me kill them, but not you. Thank you for being so compliant." **

Sand started to rise up from the floor of the mindscape around Naruto. Naruto wasn't as compliant as Shukaku thought though, as the sand neared him he quickly pounded his fists together causing the sand to disperse. Naruto, ingnoring Shukaku's scowl, said, "Sorry, well not really, but I'm not here to die, I'm here to fix up the little insomnia problem that the Ichibi's jinchuriki have been having. And I can tell it's you that's causing it, so If you'll just be compliant, I can make your journey to Hell all the easier."

Shukaku sneered at Naruto and started saying, **"And why would I leave here, because of my seal I needn't bind myself to the mortal coil as all other beings do. Because of my bindings I'm immortal, and I control Shukaku, I have what every mortal dreams of, eternal life and power. Why would I ever give this up?"**

Naruto sighed and said, "Well you can't say I didn't give you a choice."

Shukaku raised up his hand and directed the sand to attack the black-haired Uzumaki. Naruto once more pounded his fists together, dispersing the sand. "You know, I gave you the option of the easy way, but now I see I have to do it the hard way." Shukaku once more raised the sand to form a dome around Naruto. He made to crush the dome, but was halted when Naruto used a quick, but large, burst of chakra to blow both the sand and Shukaku backwards. As Shukaku struggled to get up, Naruto picked up the slack chain and pulled Shukaku towards him. Glaring at Shukaku, Naruto asked, "So, this is what you use to control Shukaku and bind your soul to his essence? I wonder what would happen If I, oh, I don't know, broke it."

Shukaku's eye widened as he yelled out, **"No, please don't." **

Naruto tossed Shukaku onto the ground and grabbed the chain and pulled as hard as he could, removing the kunai from Shukaku's head, causing the Biju to scream out in joy as it finally gained some measure of freedom. Scowling down at the sand priest Naruto pulled the kunai towards himself and examined the seal, he hated the sand priest, but he had to admit, he knew how to make a good seal. Ignoring Shukaku's groveling, he ripped the tag to pieces, and from the chain surrounding the sand priests neck a bright light filled the seal.

**The Real World... You know that place we all hate, hence why we spend all our time reading/writing fanfiction... Ehem, back to the story:**

Gaara screamed in pain as a bright white light burst out from between him and Naruto propelling them away from each other. Naruto shook the cobwebs out of his head as he got up, seeing that Gaara was writhing in pain as a seal array started to glow white along the area of his stomach he rushed towards Gaara and picked him up by his neck. Looking at the seal, he charged his black and red chakra into his hand and dug his fingers into the seal. Pulling as hard as he could a figure started to appear in Naruto's hand, with one last yank he pulled the figure out and onto the ground as he let go of Gaara. The figure started to take shape until it took the form of the sand priest. The crazed priest looked down at the ground eyes wide in shock he said in disbelief, "No, no, this can't be, I can't be human again. I just can't be."

He was so consumed by his disbelief that he didn't even notice Naruto walking up to him until he was roughly grabbed by his neck and hoisted up into the air. Naruto looked at the helpless priest with an amused smirk and said, "Hehe, you're not from Konoha so you don't know, but for an Uzumaki the word 'impossible' is just that, a word. Just like how two minutes ago you thought it was impossible for you to die, and yet now I'm gonna kill you, irony's funny like that huh?"

Smirking an evil smirk he threw Shukaku onto the ground and crushed Shukaku's head with his boot. As Shukaku's head was crushed, tendrils sprung from Naruto's body and wrapped around the deceased sand priests body. As the tendrils receded back to their master, Shukaku's form began to shift into the same material as the tendrils, it too receding into the Uzumaki's body. Naruto gripped his head in pain as memories of Shukaku's life filled his head, when he first had the Biju sealed within him, when he first started his monk training, his descent into insanity due to the power he held, and then his pursuit for immorality through tying himself to his Biju. He also felt some of the hosts remnant Biju chakra start to flow into his system, restoring some of the energy he used in the fight.

Recovering from the overload of information he looked towards Gaara and saw him crawling away from him. He didn't make any attempts to move towards Gaara, but merely stood there and said, "You should know, I get where you're coming from with all this kill others to prove your existence sort of thing," Gaara stopped his escape upon hearing this, "I'm a vessel like you after all, we're rarely treated like humans, hell we're usually lucky if people treat us like a plague." Looking down with a hint of hurt in his eyes he continued, "But the reason I didn't become entirely like you are now, was because, despite all the people who hated me, there were still those who cared about me, like the old man Hokage, and Teuchi and Ayame. It's because of people like them I still hold some semblance of sanity, it's because of them I'm still at least partially human."

"Well, not all of us can have what you have," Gaara said with a mixture of envy and anger in his voice.

Naruto shook his head and looked into the treeline and called out, "I know you're there, you can come out now." As he said this Temari and Kankuro came out from their respective hiding places, each of them still holding a kunai, ready to kill Naruto if he made another move against Gaara. Naruto looked back to Gaara and said, "They're willing to try and take me down if I try to kill you. And they saw me take down a giant tanuki demon, and crush a man's skull with my foot, that sounds like love to me." Gaara looked at his siblings with a hint of surprise, here were people who had feared him all his life, and if the man they knew for a fact could kill them with literally a flick of his wrist, tried to harm him, they would try to kill him to make sure he lived. Naruto resumed his speech, "They do love you, they were just a bit afraid of you going batshit on them like you did to everyone else, and now that you can actually sleep, and the voices telling you to kill things won't be as loud, then maybe you guys can start to build up your relationship. Now I suggest you guys get outta here while you can, I can't imagine too many of the shinobi in Konoha will be willing to look at a Suna shinobi with kind eyes. And Gaara, get some sleep, I'd say you have around thirteen years of catching up to do."

Temari looked at the man who was sparing their lives for a few seconds before a growing suspicion forced her to ask, "You said they kept you _partially_ human, so what are you?"

Naruto looked back at them, this time no smirk, no snicker, no insanity, no emotion at all, and replied simply, "Something less than human, but something more, something far, far more."

With that he turned in the direction of his village and began the trek home. The Suna siblings decided that they would take his advice and do the same. Temari and Kankuro got on either side of Gaara and slung one of his arms over their shoulders and picked him up. With that they too began their journey home. When they were several yards away Gaara, who had remained silent so far, had spoken up and said, "Kankuro, Temari, I'm sorry."

The two looked at each other, surprise etched on their faces, neither spoke until Kankuro said, "It's alright Gaara, a lot of things have changed, and maybe they're changing for the better."

Temari nodded in agreement and said, "Yeah Gaara, if anything we're the ones to blame, we didn't make as much of an effort as we could. But like Kankuro said, things are about to change."

And for the first time in their lives they saw their little brother have some sort of peace fall over him before he entered sleep's gentle embrace for the first time. For the rest of the journey they were silent, but one thought came to all three of their minds constantly, 'Thank you, Naruto Uzumaki.'


	6. Answers: Part 1

**A/N: Hey there everybody, I'm back from vacation, and I brought Chapter 6 with me. Sorry this took me so long to get out, it was a bit of a bitch trying to convert the scenes of this story in my head into the written words, mix that in with schedule conflicts, and general procrastination, and you get the reason why it took me so long for me to update. I should tell you, once Prototype 2 comes out I'm definitely going to be updating at a much slower rate, seeing as how I'm going to go into total seclusion when that game comes out, and I really hate to say that after I took so long to get this chapter out. So I apologize in advance, I'll try to at least work on the chapters a little bit, maybe put up a oneshot or two, but on the upside after I play the game I'll have a lot more inspiration and material to work with. And speaking of material, to Alpahwolfy288, I'm very thankful that you like my fic enough that you want to try and contribute, and I may even use this character, or the abilities, in another fic, but I'm not really looking for any OC's for this story. Now, I said that I would reveal how Haku's alive, how Naruto gained the virus, and a few other things in this chapter, but it got a bit long while I was writing it, and I haven't updated in nearly three weeks, so I decided to put a lot of the stuff in the next chapter. This should hopefully hold all of you off until I can post it. So I apologize, but hope you'll still enjoy the chapter and review. The harem currently consists of these girls: Haku, Tenten, Fu, Chomei, Yugito, Matatabi, Tayuya, Konan, Hana, Anko, and Mei. So without further ado, the discaimer. Last Chapter's Word Count: 5950 words.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Prototype. If I did, why would I put this on fanfiction?**

**Outside Konoha:**

Naruto marched through the forest, making his way back to Konoha, all the while going over his fight with Gaara in his head. He remembered several moments where he could have either ended the fight much sooner, or made the fight much easier in the long run. He berated himself for not taking the fight all that seriously until Shukaku himself made an appearance. Given he never really took any opponent seriously, due him usually being able to back up whatever threats he made, but his toying around had nearly cost Gaara his life. Given, he loved destruction and fighting, but if at all possible he wanted to avoid causing the death of another jinchuriki, knowing what kind of suffering they went through.

Naruto just sighed and kept marching through the forest, taking in the quiet until he heard several people hopping through the trees a few yards away. Several Oto nin, seeing that even Shukaku was taken down, and their boss had fled from the battlefield, decided it was best to keep a consistent amount of blood in their bodies by getting out of the village. Shrugging, he ignored them, he had gotten enough info from the other lackies Orochimaru sent into the village.

Going back into his own world, he thought back to what he had said to the Suna siblings, about being something different from a human. In all honesty, he didn't know what he was either, ever since he got these powers he had been even more different from the average person, aside from being able to drive his bare hand into a person's chest, rip out their heart while it was still beating, and then shoving it down their throats while still beating. His personality was already a bit dark before he got these powers, and when he gained these powers he had become much darker. His sense of humor became more sadistic, he often came off as a bit crazy, Hell he'd freely admit he was a bit of a sociopath at times, and, the biggest change, when he killed, he either did it with no regret, or he enjoyed the hell out of it. That was main reason he had to put up his disguise when he was young, pretty much everyone would take that as a sign that the fox was taking over or he was showing his own demonic nature.

He shook his head at the stupidity that seemed to abound in his village. As he gazed out in the distance, he thought about everything he was going to have to explain to the old man Hokage and Kakashi. It was going to be a bitch to explaining everything to them, like how he got his powers, how long he had his disguise, and of course explaining to Kakashi-sensei how Haku was alive. He merely sighed at the thought of going through what was inevitabely going to be an ungodly long explanation, and just kept on marching forward until he reached Konoha's gate.

**Inside Konoha:**

Hiruzen Sarutobi was panting and holding a deep cut in his right side closed with his hand, trying to stem the large flow of blood. After Orochimaru made his escape, he and Jiraiya had ventured into different parts of the village to try and minimalize the damage. He had arrived to find that the Oto and Suna nin were making very little progress in actually doing any damage to the village. They were unprepared for the unexpected and they were paying the price with their lives. When he appeared, it demoralized the enemies to find out that their boss had failed to kill a man nearing his seventies, even if he was heralded as the **God of Shinobi** in his prime, which drastically effected their performance in battle. By the the time the majority of Suna's and Oto's forces had decided to retreat, the ground was littered with the bodies of either injured or dead foreign shinobi, only a small amount of the casualities belonging to Konoha.

Though a few things kept plaguing his mind, namely Naruto, who had revealed himself to be entirely different from what he thought the once-blonde to be, and an unknown girl who utilized ice to capture several Oto nin and Suna nin, and kill a large number of Oto nin. When he approached her earlier she said her name was Haku, and she claimed to be a friend of Naruto, whom she kept addressing with a 'sama' suffix. He had wanted to question her more about what she knew concerning his surrogate grandson, but they were interrupted by several Oto nin, so he didn't get the chance to ask. So now he was merely leaning against a wall, Enma having returned to his summon's home, trying to recover his lost energy.

Haku looked over at the old man and walked up to him, asking, "Are you alright?"

Hiruzen looked up at the ice girl and replied, "I'm fine, but I'm definitely going to need a doctor soon."

Haku gazed at the old man for a moment, a strange light appearing in her eyes. Her gaze made him feel like he was being observed by a microscope or by the Byakugan, like she was gazing into the core of his very being. After a few brief moments of looking at the old man the light in her eyes died down as she raised up her right hand. She closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on chanelling chakra into her hand, as she did a strange black and red chakra enveloped her hand. When the chakra appeared she laid her palm on Sarutobi's chest.

Hiruzen felt immense pain. He had merely been a bit exhausted, and his muscles were feeling a bit stiff, until the ice girl had touched him with that strange chakra. The instant her palm had touched his chest he felt pain flood his system. It felt like lava was poured into his veins, making him pump liquid fire into his system. For several moments he was gritting his teeth in pain, biting back screams of pain until the pain vanished as though it had never been there. Slumping down to the ground he let out a sigh of relief, glad that whatever the girl had done was over. He was about to question her on why she had put him through that, until he realized he felt much better. His muscles felt much more limber, he was breathing much more easily, as though his years of smoking had been reversed, the cut at his side was closed, with no signs of a scar, and he felt no exhaustion, in fact he felt better then he had in years.

He looked up to give the ice girl a questioning look. She merely shrugged and replied with, "Naruto-sama doesn't like to see those close to his heart suffer. So I just gave you a bit of a helping hand."

"And you making me feel like lava was in my blood didn't qualify as suffering?"

"Sometimes the medicine is worse than the sickness. And I wouldn't have had to do that had you not smoked so much in your life. And I'm pretty sure your family will appreciate me fixing up your lungs."

Hiruzen begrudgingly nodded at that and asked, "Why do you call Naruto, 'Naruto-sama?'"

"You'll find out very soon. Naruto-sama said he'd answer your questions after the exams. Once he returns he'll explain everything, so just wait for a few minutes," Haku replied.

Hiruzen was about to try and ask her despite her protests until Haku briefly got a far away look in her eyes as though she was focusing on something else. A second later her eyes returned to normal, not a second afterwards Naruto appeared in a **shunshin**. He gave an eye-smile and said, in a perfect imitation of Kakashi's voice, "Yo, sorry I'm late, I would have gotten here quicker, but I had to fight a giant chakra entity in the form a giant one-tailed tanuki demon made of sand that was possessing a thirteen year old boy."

Hiruzen and Haku sweatdropped at Naruto's obvious crack at his sensei's behavior. Sarutobi merely shook his head at Naruto's antics and said, "Naruto, you've got a lot of explaining to do."

Naruto sighed and said, "Yeah, I figured as much. This is going to be one long-ass explanation."

Haku helped Hiruzen get back up off the ground. Naruto quickly made two **Shadow Clones** and ordered them to find Jiraiya and Kakashi, and bring them to the Hokage's Office. Naruto then turned to his surrogate grandfather as his clones ran off and said, "This isn't the kind of conversation that should be had out in the open. We need to take this somewhere more private."

Hiruzen nodded in agreement as he finally stood up. The three of them then **shunshined** off to the Hokage's Tower.

**Chunin Exams Stadium**

Kakashi was restraining several unconcious Oto nin. After the invasion had started he had been quick to dispel the genjutsu and knock out his student, Sakura, to keep her out of the action. Afterwards he and the majority of the Chunin and Jonin in the stadium had started their defense against the invaders. Either knocking them out to capture them for interrogation, or killing them.

Finishing up the restraints he made to sit down and recover from the strain using his sharingan had put on him. Sadly he didn't get the oppurtuntiy to rest as a clone of his student appeared in front of him in a **shunshin**.

"Yo," went the clone in an imitation of Kakashi, complete with eye smile.

Kakashi looked up, still exhausted, and asked, "Oh, Naruto, what is it?"

"I'm not Naruto, I'm a clone. As for what I want, boss wants you to get to the Hokage's Office ASAP. And if you're late, boss will burn this."

He held up Kakashi's book, Icha Icha Paradise. Kakashi checked his pouch for his book only to find the one in the clone's hand was indeed his. His visible eye widened, and what part of his face that was available paled greatly. He quickly said, "Okay, okay, I'll be on time."

The clone merley gave a smile and said, "Okay you have four minutes, I suggest you use them wisely."

The clone then shunshined away, leaving Kakashi behind. Kakashi gave an exhausted sigh and moved his tired form towards the Hokage's Office.

**Somewhere in the village**

Jiraiya was on the rooftops inspecting the damage done to the village. For the most part, the village looked great for somewhere that had just had a full-scale invasion occur. The majority of the buildings bore a minimal amount of scars, only missing slight chunks of concrete, or large cracks, a few of the buildings were on fire, but several shinobi were putting them out with **Suiton** jutsu. The battlefield was littered with the casualties of the battle. Most of the bodies belonged to Suna and Oto, with only a few of the corpses belonging to Konoha.

As he was inspecting the damage, he didn't notice his apprentice's clone sneak up behind him, wearing an evil smirk on its face, and yelled, "HEY, PERVY SAGE!"

Jiraiya jumped in surprise, nearly falling off the rooftop. Jiraiya regained his balance and yelled, "What the hell was that for gaki?"

The clone merely gave a devilish smirk and said, "To get your attention, what else. Regardless, boss and the old man need you up at the Hokage's Office. So get your ass moving perv." The clone gave a brief chuckle and dispelled itself.

The toad sage grumbled in annoyance before using a shunshin to get to the Hokage's Tower.

**Hokage's Tower**

The old man, ice user, and jinchuriki appeared outside the, suprisingly undamaged, Hokage's Tower in a shunshin. The trio then made their way up to the Hokage's Office, upon entering, Hiruzen took his usual seat behind his desk, while Haku and Naruto remained standing. For a few brief moments there was silence until Naruto's clone walked in the door. The clone then handed its creator Kakashi's smut book. Naruto merely raised an eyebrow at his clone, wondering why the clone was giving him his sensei's book. The clone gave it's creator a devilish smirk before dispelling and sending it's memories back to it's creator, after recieving the information he got a devilish grin of his own.

The three then went back to waiting for the other's in silence. After three minutes passed, Naruto held up held up five fingers and put down one finger for every second that passed. As he was about to put down his last finger, Kakashi barged into the office, and yelled out, "I'm not late, don't burn it!"

Naruto chuckled before tossing the book back to his sensei. Kakashi catched the smut and sighed in relief. After pocketing the book he looked over to the girl there and saw who it was. His visible eye widened to the size of a dinner plate, and he asked, "H-h-how are you alive?"

Haku chuckled and said, "What, you're not happy to see me?"

Naruto then asked, "Well I believe you two are at least decently acquainted, am I correct?"

Kakashi, still a bit freaked out, asked, "You're Haku? Zabuza's apprentice? The girl I killed with my **Lightning Blade**?"

Haku once more chuckled and said, "Yes to the first two, no to the last."

Hiruzen and Kakashi raised an eyebrow, clearly confused about what was going on. Naruto chuckled and said, "As I said, all will be revealed in time. We just need to wait for Pervy Sage."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow and asked, "'Pervy Sage?'"

"You know him as Jiraiya."

Kakashi wanted to berate his student for his blatant disrespect of one of the Sannin, but this was the same boy who called him a cyclopes, and the Hokage an old man, on a regular basis, so he decided to just drop the subject before he even brought it up. The four then went back to waiting for the self-proclaimed Super Pervert. Five minutes later Jiraiya appeared in the window and asked his old teacher, "You wanted to see me sensei?"

Hiruzen then nodded, "Yes Jiraiya." He looked at his surrogate grandson and said, "Well Naruto as I said you've got a lot of explaining to do."

Naruto smirked and said, "Well I'd love to start explaining, but you're gonna have to elaborate on what you want an explanation of."

Hiruzen closed his eyes in thought for a moment before answering, "I suppose the first thing I should ask about are those strange abilities of yours."

Naruto gave a smirk and asked, "I suppose you mean my shapeshifting and super strength, and not my ability to juggle small rodents to ballads from Wine Country?"

The four others in the room sweatdropped at his sense of humor before Hiruzen cleared his throat and said, "I meant the first one, not... whatever the Hell the second one was."

Naruto sighed and said, "It figures you asked the long answered question first. Alright, to answer this question, and other questions, in full, I'm going to have to give you a not-so-brief history lesson. So I'd get comfy, because we're gonna be here a while."

Naruto cleared his throat and said, "To start this, you're gonna have to know the world wasn't always like it is now. The continent we live on right now, that contains the Elemental Countries, millennia ago, was called North America. And in that continent was a country called the United States of America. Whatever caused the world to change into what it's like now I don't know, so don't ask. Either way, like in all of mankind's history, war was inevitable, so this country formed a military to combat all threats from other nations seeking to take over. And, just as we do, the military had different factions for different purposes, I'm not going to name them all, but the one we are most concerned about is a faction called Blackwatch. This military faction was a black ops faction that didn't officialy exist, created for the sake of fighting against biological warfare, and if necessary use it against their enemies. Eventually they began to develop their own virus to use against other countries, this virus was called Redlight. To test out this virus they started to test it on chimpanzees to determine if it was suitable for human experimentation, they dubbed this test Carnival 1. The results were surprising - all of the test subjects exhibited very beneficial developments, such as heightened intelligence, increased strength, and other effects. This success paved the way for a new military test called Carnival 2.

The group listened intently, completely enthralled at the tale being woven. So far they had heard incredible things, the great change of the world, entire long forgotten civilizations, and even a strange virus that gave the test subjects incredible abilities. But the four could tell that things were about to go South, very quickly.

After a brief pause Naruto continued, " One year later, the army set up a military town called Hope, to find the citizens who would inhabit this town, they contacted several relatives of military members, claiming they would become part of a program to test a self-sufficient base in case of a nuclear attack, don't ask what a nuclear attack is, I'll tell you later. They didn't question it, after all, they had family in the military, why would they question them?"

The four listeners scowled at the mention of how these people, whose job it was to protect them, were willing to use innocent people as test subjects. Then the group remembered sadly that a lot of shinobi villages and organazations still did this.

Naruto, after letting the current info sink in, continued, "The military then called on the residents to have an injection of what they claimed to be a 'harmless' solution stimulating the effects of nuclear fallout, the residents literally 'rolled up their sleeves' for the researchers to inject them with the substance. As part of it, all 461 residents of the town were infected with a strain of a new virus called Blacklight, called DX-1118. Initially there were no results at all, no one exhibited any immediate changes or alterations, until one year later that is. A year after the start of the injection, several children were born, dubbed "Hope Children." Each one of these children had some abnormal ability, unfortunately they all either died at birth, or died before they reached the age of three. After each child passed away, their bodies were preserved for future reference.

Naruto once more paused, then gave a dark, mirthless chuckle and said, "Now doesn't that sound familiar, sacrificing children and infant lives for the sake of obtaining military might?"

Hiruzen visibley winced at that, remembering several of the times when his old rival, Danzo, had tried to convince him to reinstate the ROOT program to bolster their forces after the Kyuubi attack on Konoha. ROOT had been started to make children from a young age into emotionless weapons to be used at Konoha's beck and call, he was the one to disband it, if there was one thing in his life he was proud of, it was getting rid of that. He had of course adamantly refused, knowing that if he did reinstate ROOT, Danzo would do everything possible to make Naruto in to some sort of weapon for either Konoha or himself to use whenever needed. Though, despite the official reports, Hiruzen and Jiraiya had a very bad feeling that Danzo was continuing ROOT from withing the shadows, out of the sights of the law.

Haku and Kakashi each wore an angry expression with a sad look in their eye(s). Angry because, despite already knowing about this sort of thing, it still angered them greatly to know that people were willing to sell out their own kind for power, and sad because these children never got a chance to live life, and they wouldn't even find comfort in death due to their bodies being used for testing. One sentiment that all five people in the room shared, was that to do such a thing was unforgivable.

Naruto then continued his history lesson. "It was only after the last Hope Child died approximately two years after the test started that the shit really hit the fan. Among the population of the town was an eighteen year old woman, named Elizabeth Greene. Now there was something special about this woman, Elizabeth Greene possesed a special genetic code which accepted the virus and changed her. Just as the Hope Children and chimpanzees did, she gained special abilities from the virus. She gained ungodly high physical capabilities, she was able to create new strains of the virus on a daily basis, infect anything she touched, even inorganic matter, and, the most shocking ability, the virus halted her aging and increased her regenerative abilities, effectively making her immortal.

The only one in the room who didn't have their jaw planted firmly on the ground was Haku, having heard this history lesson before. Jiraiya picked up his own jaw and asked, "Wait, how could a virus do that, make someone immortal that is?"

Naruto looked at the self-proclaimed super pervert and said, "If I told you the full explanation we'd never leave this place, so I'll summarize. Normally cells can only replace or heal themselves so many times before it kills off the organism, but her regenerative abilities were so great that the cells could heal themselves an indefinite number of times. Not only that, but she could gain more genetic material and heal herself through an ability called 'consuming,' in which she would convert a living organism into a substance called biomass and absorb it, so even in the event that great damage was inflicted on her she could still survive nearly anything. All of this together effectively made Greene into an powerful, immortal, factory for the virus.

Jiraiya and Hiruzen gave each other a discreet look, remembering what happened to Naruto during his match with Neji. He had his heart literally explode inside his chest, and he was able to survive and recover from it in not even a full ten seconds. The Uzumaki may have had incredible longevity and healing abilities, but none of them, even with the Kyuubi giving aid, could've survived that. Each of them then shuddered having the same thought, namely Orochimaru getting his hands on the virus. Immortality and powers beyond mortal reach, that was pretty much his ultimate wet dream.

Naruto then cleared his throat once more and continued. "Sometime after her transformation, she began to infect the other residents of the town with her own particular strand of the virus, turning them into mindless creatures that only lived to consume other beings. She also had a special ability called 'Hive Mind,' this ability gave her a telepathic link to all organisms infected with the virus, allowing her to command the mindless Infected, like a queen bee with the drones of the hive. After one year of Greene commanding the town, Blackwatch finally took action by bombing the town, forcing Greene and the Infected to take up residence in a hospital. Eventually Blackwatch would storm the hospital, trying to finally end the threat of Greene and the Infected. After breaking into the hospital they killed off the Infected and made their way to Greene, discovering the real reason Greene was taking up residence in the hospital... namely, she was giving birth. Blackwatch took advantage of Greene's weakened state to capture her and her newborn son, dubbed by Blackwatch as "PARIAH." The two were then taken into military custody, and when they were out, they destroyed the remnants of the town. Thus paving way for the next Blackwatch project.

The group let the information soak in, it was a lot to swallow after all. The military creating a strange virus, a woman gaining strange powers from the virus, and a bunch of terms that were completely foreign to them, such as "nuclear," and "fallout."

For a few brief moments there was silence, until Kakashi decided to be the one to ask a few questions that were running through the white-haired trio's mind. "Okay, you've said stuff like, 'nuclear,' and 'fallout,' what do those mean?"

Naruto looked over at Haku and asked, "Do you wanna explain this, I've been ranting for twenty minutes now? How Iruka does this all day, every day, I'll never know."

Haku nodded and turned to the white-haired cyclopes to begin her explanation. "A nuclear weapon is a weapon made through the usage of several components, namely special materials called, 'radioactive materials,' such as uranium and other certain elements. Or they used the power of splitting cells in a process known as 'fission.' These elements together could create a massive explosion, and the effects of the materials could cause great damage to the area around the explosion, causing different cancers or other harmful effects to those who inhabit the area, and that's what fallout is. If you wanna know how big of an explosion it could create, it could destroy this entire village and then some."

The trio gulped at the mention of a weapon with that kind of power. They had heard Iwa had powerful explosives due to the fact their village held the wielders of the **Bakuton** (Explosion Release) kekkei genkai, and the various experiments of their Explosion Corps., but this bomb could outdo anything they had ever done.

Haku, seeing their discontent, quickly calmed them down, "Don't worry about another one of these being made, the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb are long gone from this world."

The group quickly calmed at hearing that. As they let out a collective sigh of relief, Hiruzen decided to ask, "How much more history do we need to hear before you start to tell us about the questions we mean to ask?"

"Not too much, I just need to explain a few more things, then I'll be able to answer your questions," Naruto replied.

Hiruzen then nodded and gestured for Naruto to continue. Naruto once more continued his history lesson. "Alright, to continue, nearly two decades after the events of Carnival 2, Blackwatch came into contact with a man named Raymond Mcmullen, who had published a research paper concerning junk DNA and Genetic memory. Finding the research interesting, they came to the man and his company, called Gentek, and asked him to work on the Redlight virus, and study Elizabeth Greene. They then transferred Greene to Gentek's facility in a large city called 'New York.' During his studies, McMullen found Greene more interesting than the virus she was infected with, which caused him to continue his studies based on her DNA, even though Blackwatch held no interest in this. He soon realized that Blackwatch had not divulged all the information about Greene. Finding out about the birth of PARIAH, he confronted the leader of Blackwatch, trying to get access to him. But ultimately he was turned down, saying he didn't have clearance to view all the data obtained during the operation.

Naruto took a deep breath, calming himself, and continued, "Now we come to possibly the most important figure in this story. Ten years after the start of McMullen's research on the virus, he recruited a young researcher named Alex Mercer. Soon after his recruitment, Mercer became the associative head of the Blacklight project, a project based on the weaponization of the Redlight virus. Mercer succeeded in creating a new and deadly strand of the Blacklight virus in a mere three years. A feat no one else involved with the project could claim. And since then he was more interested about the virus and its origin. Mercer was then granted access to Greene under McMullen's supervision. While Mercer studied Greene, he became suspicious of Gentek's intentions. Eventually Mercer's paranoia reached its peak, leading him to do his own secret investigation on Gentek. After deep digging with the assistance with of his sister Dana, Mercer realized that Gentek employees associated with the Blacklight project were being silenced by Blackwatch; usually with a bullet between the eyes in a dark alley. Blackwatch suspected one too many leaks and ordered a purge of the researcher. Alex Mercer then fled Gentek with the sample of the virus he had worked on for ten years as a form of insurance. But Blackwatch was too quick and too smart for him. While attempting to escape the city by train, Mercer was cornered in a place called Penn Station by Blackwatch agents.

The group suddenly found themselves sweating, able to tell that this was not going to go well by any means. They could already feel things were going to go bad. To them it felt as though this single man's actions were going to condemn millions of lives to incredible suffering and death.

"In a fit of vengeance and rage, he threw the vial to the floor, smashing it and unleashing a biological apocalypse. He was then promptly killed by the Blackwatch operatives. The virus then began to slowly and quietly spread to everyone in the station. As he fell, he collapsed onto the viral sample, becoming infected as he died. His body was taken back to Gentek in a body bag. Little did anyone know, as he was transported, the virus was reconstructing his body, cell by cell; his biological matter feeding the virus as it replicated the still-living matter it had infected."

The people in the room, even Haku, who had heard all this before, felt a shiver run up their spines. As though they were about to hear about the birth of something both amazing and terrible.

"His body was then taken into the morgue for disection, but something happened that no one could have anticipated... he lived."

The white-haired trio's skin nearly matched their hair color. You'd think hearing all of what they had heard would stop them from getting surprised, but hearing about a man coming back from the dead would scare anyone.

Naruto inwardly chuckled at their reaction, and then resumed his explanation. "Mercer woke up, scaring off the scientists who were about to cut him open. Having no memories of how he got there, he made his way out. And from there on, hell itself would break loose. After escaping the morgue, and the Blackwatch troops who pursued him, he made his way to his sister, Dana, finding her apartment, and killing the troops that had tried to capture her. Over the next few days Mercer and his Dana begana to try and find those responsible for what happened to him. Digging into files concerning Gentek they found about Hope, but the files didn't contain that much info regarding _exactly_ what happened at the town. So when they found out about Elizabeth Greene, they didn't know what she actually was, they thought she was just the victim of some sick Gentek experiment. So Mercer snuck into the Gentek building guarded by Blackwatch, and found Greene in a sort of prison, and then he did possibly the stupidest thing ever, he released her. Greene knocked him into a wall and sent these infected creatures created from living organisms, called Hunters to chase and kill him. And this was only the beggining, after the initial scuffle with the Hunters, Mercer escaped and began his campaign against both Greene and Blackwatch. Over time he gained several special abilities, such as the consuming ability apparent to nearly all Infected creatures, being able to run up vertical surfaces without chakra, regenerating from serious wounds in the span of a few minutes, jumping nearly twenty stories in the air, and shapeshifting his limbs into bladed and club weapons. After several days of movements to figure out more about the virus, Mercer was eventually injected with a cancerous 'cure' for the virus by a strong human called Captain Cross, which nearly killed him. Though he was eventually cured with the aid of a mortician named Bradley Ragland. But that small victory would be short-lived, Greene created a new breed of Hunter to capture Dana in an attempt to hit Mercer where it hurt. The new Hunter escaped with Dana in hand and Mercer left alive and emotionally weakened.

The four listeners each lowered there heads in sadness, all having felt that at least once in their lives. The loss of someone close to your heart was something serious, it was a wound that always cut deeper than a chasm, and was so horrible that there were times you never recovered from it, and you were forced to bare the brunt of the weight throughout your life, and your only relief was in the grave.

Naruto gave them a moment of silence before continuing. "Mercer then consumed a Hunter with the same rank as the one that captured Dana, and several infected Blackwatch troops, in order to gain the same Hive Mind ability that Greene had so he could track down the Hunter that took Dana. He then found the Hunter and consumed it to locate Dana. As it turned out, she was being kept by Greene. After a short time he tracked down Greene to an infected breeding ground called a Hive, and had a brief bout with her before injecting her with the same cure that was used on him. Unlike him however, her body was capable of rejecting it and creating a new form of Hunter from it, called a Supreme Hunter. She then fled, and Mercer fought the Hunter until it entered a stage that made it seem like it was dead, Dana was found close to the battle ground and he fled. He gave Dana's comatose body to Ragland so he could see if it was possible to bring her out of the coma. After a few days Mercer came into contact with a secret informant who sought to aid him in finding McMullen and Greene. In order to find Greene, Mercer had to utilize a special chemical substance that Blackwatch created for the sake of fighting him called Bloodtox, and pump it underground in order to force Greene out of hiding. When he pumped it underground, Greene made her appearance in a giant construct of biomass called 'Mother.' After breaking down the defenses on Mother, Greene was left vulnerable and Mercer proceeded to consume her and gain her knowledge concerning the events of Hope and PARIAH. After consuming Greene he set his sights on McMullen in order to learn what he knew about Blackwatch, and the virus. After he recieved information from his informant, he eventually tracked down McMullen by feigning fainting due to the effects of Bloodtox. His supposedly unconcious body was then taken to McMullen for study, McMullen grew excited at the prospect of researching how the virus worked in Mercer. Sadly for McMullen, this was not to be. Mercer got out of the morgue once more and confronted McMullen with several question, sadly, for Mercer at least, McMullen killed himself, taking all of his info to the grave. It then became apparent that the Blackwatch commander, Peter Randall, planned to nuke Manhattan to destroy the virus. The contact, revealed to be Captain Cross, then guided Mercer to consume a colonel, who was attempting to flee the city, in order to get onto the USS Ronald Reagan where the bomb was being held.

The listening group was completely enthralled, they could tell they were getting clsoe to end of the tale, and despite the horror they felt at the knowledge that things like this once existed, they wanted to know what had happened long ago. Though one single thought kept coming back to Jiraiya, Hiruzen, and Kakashi, namely the abilities that Mercer had were similar to the abilities Naruto exhibited in the Exams Stadium. And Jiraiya had a chill run up his spine when he heard about the consumption ability. Naruto had mentioned non-gentle methods of obtaining information during the meeting two weeks ago, and in no way did "consuming" someone sound the least bit gentle.

"Cross betrayed Mercer once on the ship, and revealed himself to be the Supreme Hunter he fought to get Dana back. The Supreme Hunter battled Mercer on the deck of the Reagan and was subsequently decapitated. Mercer took the nuclear bomb into the Ocean, allowing it to detonate out at sea, but taking him out in the process. His remains were splattered into red puddles, seemingly inert, but once a crow disturbed the remains, he consumed it and grew back into human shape.

Silence dominated the room for several moments. Everyone who heard the tale was stunned into silence. After all, how could they not be? What they had heard was unbelievable, and yet Naruto didn't have one sign on his face of either joking or lying. Shinobi had incredible powers from jutsu, and some could gain unparalled strength and speed through intense training and other jutsu, but even they had limits, and if they went beyond their limits they could become permanently crippled, and they could die just like anyone. But they had just heard about a man who had clearly broken nearly every limitation that humans had. And instead of being damaged beyond repair, he only became stronger. He had even done what Orochimaru had sought to do for most of his life, attain immortality, or at least a form of it more reliable than what he had now.

In an attempt to break the silence, and satiate his curiosity Kakashi asked, "How could any human survive that? From what you've told us a nuclear bomb could essentially obliterate all life for miles, and yet this 'Alex Mercer' was capable of doing everything you claim he did. How could any human have powers like that?"

Naruto gave a chuckle, recieving confused looks from the white-haired trio. He then said, "That's just it though, no human could, or can for that matter, do anything like that. But Alex Mercer wasn't human, Hell, he wasn't even Alex Mercer. As I said, while he was being transported to Gentek, the virus had entered his body through his bullet wounds and rebuilding Mercer cell by cell. But Mercer had already died, and the virus lived in his place. It took up a disguise so great it fooled even itself, it believed it was actually Alex Mercer. So without knowing it was just the virus, it took up the personna of the Prototype, Alex Mercer."

"Okay, that we can understand. But what is a Prototype?" Hiruzen inquired.

"Simply put, a Prototype is a being infected with a strain of the Blacklight virus, called DX-1118 C, the same viral strand that Mercer worked on for nearly a decade. After infection, the virus "plugs in" and activates the junk DNA in a target, causing biological changes that create (and recreate) a sentient mind inside the infected creature. Due to its particular genetic make-up, it's able to insert its own genetic codes into living cells. It enters, re-purposes and changes the cell, replicating previously dormant non-coding segments of genetic rewrite caused by the Blacklight virus evolves it's host's body, giving them superhuman abilities and transforming them into deadly shapeshifting beings of nearly limitless potential, power and destruction. They can fashion portions of their bodies into weapons and cause mass devastation to the enviorment with their incredible strength. Newly enhanced musculature and strengthened epidermis increases their speed, reflexes, agility and endurance, allowing them to break the boundaries of human sprinting and jumping ability to perform amazing parkour feats. They are also capable of self-regeneration to a limited degree, and are capable of consuming living biomass to regenerate and heal themselves completely. When they consume an individual, genetic memories of the individual can be retained, making even the most difficult information gathering tasks seem like a walk in the park. They're also in possesion of the ability to perfectly mimic any living being's voice, when coupled with their ability to shapeshift, it makes them the perfect infiltrators. They also possess a sharpened sense of sight which allows them to see into the thermal spectrum, or even see the nervous system of an organism. Some even possess an organic form of sonar, allowing them to track down individuals by letting out a sort of 'ping' with the virus, which will resound from the target to reveal their location to the Prototype.

Hiruzen's eyes widened in surprise at hearing about the abilities these beings called Prototypes had. Then something in his mind connected, which caused him to ask, "If there's actually a name for the condition, I'm going to assume there's been more than one Prototype, am I correct in assuming this?"

Naruto nodded and said, "You are correct. And to answer an unasked question, there have been four Prototypes to exist in total, including Mercer."

"Would it be too much to ask for who those people were?" Kakashi asked, already having a very good idea as to who one of them was.

Naruto nodded once more and said, "The second Prototype was a man named James Heller. He recieved the viral strain directly from Mercer himself after he released the virus back into New York. Heller's wife and daughter were killed by individuals infected by Blacklight, so when the military needed individuals for difficult missions into a place called the Red Zone where they believed Mercer was hiding out, he was among the first few people to sign up, just for the sake of trying to kill Mercer. After showing his strength by directly assaulting Mercer, out-running a giant infected creature, and killing a Hunter with just a knife, Mercer decided on using Heller as a lieutenant in his plans to spread the virus beyond New York, then named New York Zero, and into the rest of the world. After Heller escaped from military containment, Mercer came after him, extending a hand in friendship, claiming that Blackwatch was using NYZ as bio-weapons testing range, and that they were using him as a scapegoat. Heller was shown some information that made it seem like Mercer's tale was real, so he believed him and started his own campaign to kill off Blackwatch and other infected creatures. But eventually, he found out Mercer wasn't the saint he claimed to be. He then tracked down Mercer to force one final confrontation. Upon being found, Mercer then consumed several powerful infected humans and transformed into a more powerful version of himself. The two then fought, until eventually Heller gained an advantage in the fight, and ripped off both of Mercer's arms before he consumed him, becoming so powerful that he was actually able to consume the virus in the rest of the city with just the presence of his tendrils alone. And Mercer's last words to Heller before being consumed were, 'Welcome to the top of the food chain.'

Naruto and Haku inwardly chuckled at the reactions of the the white-haired trio. Their eyes were widened to a degree greater than what the human eye was supposed to reach, and their jaws had dropped so hard they practically made dents in the floor. They thought that Mercer was as strong as these Prototype beings came, but then they found out that someone else had come along that could defeat even Mercer, and defeat a virus as powerful Blacklight by just being around it.

Jiraiya picked up his jaw, dusted it off, and reattached it before asking, "Now would you be so kind as to tell us who the other two are? Though I have a good idea who one of them is."

Naruto nodded and said, "If you somehow didn't catch it I highly recommend you get a mental exam, because it's fairly obvious who the third is." He let out a chuckle at that and continued, "As you probably guessed, I'm the third Prototype. The virus changed my physical structure into what it is now. It gave me all the special abilities I possess, and changed my chakra into a different color with special abilities to it." As he said this, he raised his hand as a strange chakra, colored red and black, coated his hand.

Kakashi and Jiraiya merely nodded at this having already guessed this, after all it was fairly obvious. He had either implied, or demonstrated, that he had the abilities of a Prototype, so this revelation didn't have nearly as much shock and awe as the others did. But Hiruzen, while unsuprised about Naruto being a Prototype, was stunned at the sight of the chakra in his hand, and the mention of it possessing special abilities. Recognizing it, the identity of the fourth Prototype was made known to him, but he still needed to ask, "So then, who is the last Prototype?"

Naruto merely gave a grin, knowing that the old man had figured it out, but his sensei and perverted tutor had yet to figure it out. Still wearing his trademark grin, he said, "I'll give you a hint. The person is a ravenette, good looking, well dressed, pale-skinned, and is in this room."

The two who didn't know before the hint turned to Haku with a question look. Haku merely grinned and raised her right hand. As she did, tendrils writhed around her forearm and the same strange chakra Naruto possessed burst from her palm, causing the super-pervert and the smut reader's eye(s) to widen in shock. As they did this, Haku merely giggled and said with a mock thinking tone, "Who could it be indeed?"


	7. Author's Note

**A/N: Okay, I probably gave you false hope of a chapter when this showed up, and I admit, you have the right to kick my ass for how long I've made you wait without any sort of update. I apologize for that. But I think as I have some time to write this out, I should explain why I've been gone so long. Basically, it was a lot of real life crap. Varying from getting sick, writers block, various addictive games, my junior year of high school starting, and losing my original draft of Chapter 7 to a computer problem, resulting in nearly 8,000 words going right down the tube. So yeah... not a fun time I've been having. And recently I got shouldered with a humongous project in my English class that could make or break me for the semester, so I couldn't find time to work on a new Chapter 7 for a while now. I'm going to say this now, I'm not abandoning the story. I don't want to abandon this, I love getting reviews and seeing the new follower and favorite alerts showing up in my email. But, as most writers on this site can tell you, real life comes first, and I have to take care of stuff out their so I can take care of stuff on here. So, I'm just writing this to apologize, say the story isn't over, and I'm going to try and get around my writers block to get the next chapter out as soon as possible. I'll replace this with the actual chapter when it comes out. I'm not going to count an entire chapter of Authors Notes to my word count. So, once more, I'm sorry, it's not over, and I'll try my best. Thank you for your time. **


End file.
